LITERARY NOTICES. 



131 



corded to German thought and German poli- 

 cies. The " sketch " begins with the accounts 

 of the Germans given when they first began 

 to attract attention by the Roman authors, 

 and is continued by periods — the " Merovin- 

 gian," " Carlovingian," "First Feudal," " Sec- 

 ond Feudal," and " Reformation " periods, 

 the " Period of Disintegration " and the 

 "Period of Dissolution," ending in 1806. 

 The Constitution of the new empire is not 

 considered. 



The third number of the proceedings of 

 the American Society for Psychical Research 

 (Damrell and Upham, 50 cents) opens with 

 a paper, by Miss Alice C. Fletcher, on the 

 "Supernatural among the Omaha Tribe of 

 Indians," embracing myths regarding the ori- 

 gin of woman and the entrance of death into 

 the world, beliefs about the fortunes of the 

 spirit after death, and about ghosts, together 

 with a variety of superstitions and legends. 

 This is followed by a " Criticism on ' Phan- 

 tasms of the Living,' " by Prof. C. S. Peirce, 

 with "Remarks on Prof. Peirce's Paper," 

 by Edmund Gurncy, and " Mr. Peirce's Re- 

 joinder." In his criticism. Prof. Peirce states 

 sixteen conditions to which he says the thirty- 

 one coincidences between a visual hallucina- 

 tion and a death, mentioned by Messrs. Gur- 

 ney, Myers, and Pcdmore, ought to conform, 

 but one or more of which are sinned against 

 by every one of the thirty-one cases, and con- 

 cludes that " the evidence, so far as it goes, 

 seems to be rather unfavorable to the tele- 

 pathic chaiacter of the phenomena." Mr. 

 Gurney admits the weakness of a few cases, 

 defends others, and gives additional evidence 

 in support of some, but yields no important 

 point. Prof. Peirce's rejoinder deals with 

 the mathematical probabilities of the thirty- 

 one cases being accidental coincidences, and 

 reviews some of the cases in detail. This 

 discussion is followed by brief reports from 

 several committees. The experiments and 

 investigations of the Committee on Thought- 

 Transference had yielded little but nega- 

 tive results. The Committee on Experi- 

 mental Psychology had received five hundred 

 returns from a blank designed to test the 

 prevalence of superstition regarding sitting 

 down thirteen at table, beginning a voyage on 

 Friday, seeing the new moon over the left 

 shoulder, and occupying a house reputed to 



be haunted. Of three hundred and nine 

 men, about one tenth were more or less in- 

 fluenced by the first three superstitions, and 

 of one hundred and ninety-one women about 

 two tenths. The form of the fourth ques- 

 tion is not such as to separate the respond- 

 ents who have a belief in the superstition 

 from those who have not. The Committee 

 on Apparitions and Haunted Houses deemed 

 the last part of their designation a mis- 

 nomer, as they had not been able to learn of 

 any house which was reputed to be haunted 

 at the present time. They reported a num- 

 ber of well-authenticated cases of presenti- 

 ments, and stated that materials for their re- 

 search were coming in quite freely. The 

 Committee on Mediumistic Phenomena re- 

 ported that professional materializing me- 

 diums could not be got to give seances under 

 conditions suitable to a scientific investiga- 

 tion, and that where non-professional me- 

 diums had given such seances the results 

 were negative. A paper by the chairman, 

 on " The Basis of Investigation of Medium- 

 istic Phenomena," was appended to the re- 

 port. This is followed by two papers on 

 hypnotism, and one on " The Consciousness 

 of Lost Limbs." 



" The American Folk-Lore Society " has 

 been formed for "the study of folk-lore in 

 general, and in particular the collection and 

 publication of the folk-lore of North Amer- 

 ica." Its President is Prof. Child, of H.ar- 

 vard ; William Wells Newell, of Cambridge, 

 Mass., is the Secretary ; and among its other 

 officers are many well-known American an- 

 thropologists. Its medium of publication is 

 The Journal of American Folk-Lore (Hough- 

 ton, $3 a year), a quarterly magazine, the 

 second number of which is before us. W. 

 W. Newell is the general editor. This num- 

 ber contains ten articles, treating of Indian 

 myths and customs, folk-lore of the PennsyL 

 vania Germans, superstitions and tales of the 

 negroes, etc., together with departments for 

 notes, items, meanings of words, and titles 

 of articles on folk-lore in American and for- 

 eign journals. The field to which the jour- 

 nal is devoted is exceedingly interesting and 

 instructive, and is one in which the material 

 for study should be seized upon at once, for 

 it will soon be too late. 



Part II, of Vol. IX, second series, of the 

 Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences 



