FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES 49 



so altered and almost wholly remodelled that it would not at 

 all resemble the poor stuff we had been compelled to hear. 



At Glasgow, in 1876, I was President of the Biological 

 Section, and our meeting was rendered rather lively by the 

 announcement of a paper by Professor W. F. Barrett on 

 experiments in thought-reading. The reading of this was 

 opposed by Dr. W. B. Carpenter and others, but as it had 

 been accepted by the section, it was read. Then followed a 

 rather heated discussion; but there were several supporters 

 of the paper, among them was Lord Rayleigh, and the public 

 evidently took the greatest interest in the subject, the hall 

 being crowded. After having studied the matter some years 

 longer, Professor Barrett, with the assistance of the late 

 Frederick Myers, Professor Sidgwick, Edmund Gurney, and 

 a few other friends, founded the Society for Psychical Re- 

 search, which has collected a very large amount of evidence 

 and is still actively at work. 



I and my wife were entertained at Glasgow by Mr. and 

 Mrs. Mirlees, and at one of their dinner-parties we enjoyed 

 the company of William Pengelly, of Torquay, the well-known 

 explorer of Kent's Cavern, whose acquaintance I had made 

 some years before while spending a few days at Torquay with 

 my friend and publisher, Mr. A. Macmillan. He sat on one 

 side of our hostess, and I and my wife on the other, and during 

 the whole dinner he kept up such a flow of amusing and witty 

 conversation that the entire party (a large one) looked at us 

 with envy. He was certainly among the most genial and witty 

 men I have ever met, and could make even dry scientific sub- 

 jects attractive by his humorous way of narrating them. It 

 was a rather curious coincidence that on this occasion, when 

 " psychical research " had first been introduced to the British 

 Association, I learnt from Mr. Pengelly that he had himself 

 had one of the most amazing psychical experiences on record, 

 which I may perhaps find an opportunity of narrating when I 

 give an account of my own investigation of these subjects. 



After this year I felt that I had pretty well exhausted the 

 interests of the association meetings, and preferred to take 

 my autumn holiday, with my wife and two children, either by 



