364 THE BORDERLAND OF SCIENCE. 



have been rash for him to predict that he would reach 

 that trial without once failing to toss ' head ; ' but as the 

 thing has happened, the odds originally against it 

 count for nothing. They are disposed of by known 

 facts. We have said, however, that experience con- 

 firms our theory. It chances that a series of experi- 

 ments have been made on coin-tossing. Buffon was 

 the experimenter, and he tossed thousands of times, 

 noting always how many times he tossed ' head ' run- 

 ning before 'tail' appeared. In the course of these 

 trials he many times tossed ' head ' nine times running. 

 Now, if the tossing c head ' nine times running ren- 

 dered the chance of tossing a tenth head much less 

 than usual, it would necessarily follow that in consider- 

 ably more than one half of these instances Buffon 

 would have failed to toss a tenth head. But he did 

 not. I forget the exact numbers, but this I know, 

 that in about half the cases in which he tossed nine 

 * heads ' running, the next trial also gave him ' head ; ' 

 and about half of these tossings of ten successive 

 'heads' were followed by the tossing of an eleventh 

 ' head.' In the nature of things this was to be expected. 

 And now let us consider the cognate questions sug- 

 gested by our sharper's ideas respecting the person who 

 plays. This person is to consider carefully whether he 

 is ' in veinj and not otherwise to play. He is to be 

 cool and businesslike, for fortune is invariably adverse 

 to an angry player. Steinmetz, who appears to place 

 some degree of reliance on the suggestion that a player 

 should be c in vein,' cites in illustration and confirma- 



