Reaching the office, I scrutinized the writing on the envelope, and found it as follows: "Report of Special Committee--Boy Palmer--Vision--Laws of Light--Filed February 10, 1876--Stittmore, Sec." Opening the document, I saw at once that it was a full, accurate, and, up to the present time, complete account of the phenomenal case I was after, and regretted the promise made not to publish the entire report until read in open session of the College. Therefore, I shall be compelled to give the substance of the report in my own words, only giving _verbatim_ now and then a few scientific phrases which are not fully intelligible to me, or susceptible of circumlocution in common language. The report is signed by Doctors Bryant, Gadbury and Golson, three of our ablest medical men, and approved by Professor Smyth, the oculist. So far, therefore, as authenticity and scientific accuracy are concerned, our readers may rely implicitly upon the absolute correctness of every fact stated and conclusion reached. The first paragraph of the report gives the name of the child, "John Palmer, age, nine years, and place of residence, South San Francisco, Culp Hill, near Catholic Orphan Asylum;" and then plunges at once into _in medias res_. It appears that the period through which the investigation ran was only fifteen days; but it seems to have been so thorough, by the use of the ophthalmoscope and other modern appliances and tests, that no regrets ought to be indulged as to the brevity of the time employed in experiments. Besides, we have superadded a short and minute account of our own, verifying some of the most curious facts reported, with several tests proposed by ourselves and not included in the statement of the scientific committee. To begin, then, with the beginning of the inquiries by the committee. They were conducted into a small back room, darkened by old blankets hung up at the window, for the purpose of the total exclusion of daylight; an absurd remedy for blindness, recommended by a noted quack whose name adorns the extra fly-leaf of the San Francisco _Truth Teller_. The lad was reclining upon an old settee, ill-clad and almost idiotic in expression. As the committee soon ascertained, his mother only was at home, the father being absent at his customary occupation--that of switch-tender on the San Jose Railroad. She notified her son of the presence of strangers and he rose and walked with a firm step toward where the gentlemen stood, at the entrance of the room. He shook them all by the hand and bade them good morning. In reply to questions rapidly put and answered by his mother, the following account of the infancy of the boy and the accidental discovery of his extraordinary powers of vision was given: