366 



♦ KNOWLEDGE - 



[Oct. 31, 1884. 



A dark-crimson apple : " It is round — a dark-red shade — like a 

 kuob of a door 'i " — " It is an apple." 



A key : " A little tiny tliing, with a ring at one end, and a little 

 Hag at the other, like a toy-flag." Urged to name it, replied, " It 

 is very like a key." 



A pair of scissors standing open and upright : " It is silver ? " — 

 " No ; it is steel." — " It is a pair of scissors standing upright." 



The usual phenomena were obtained by the committee on 

 mesmerism, but with the utmost precaution against collusion 

 and fraud. The cases which do most to stagger a cultivated 

 scepticism are those in which the subject remains in a per- 

 fectly normal condition, with the exception of loral eSvcta 

 produced on him without contact, and without any possi- 

 bility of expectation on his part. The following experiment 

 was repeated thirty or forty times without a single failure. 

 The subject was blindfolded and seated at a table on which 

 his ten fingers were spread out before him. A screen 

 formed of thick brown paper quadruply folded was placed 

 in front of him, extending far beyond him in all directions. 

 Two of his fingers were then selected by one of the com- 

 mittee, and slightly pointed out to the mesmeriser, who 

 proceeded to make very gentle passes over them ; and, to 

 prevent the communication to the subject of a sensation of 

 change of temperature or a current of air, a member of the 

 committee made, as nearly as possible, similar passes over 

 two others of his fingers. After a minute or less, the two 

 fingers mesmerised proved to be perfectly stiff and in- 

 sensible ; the points of sharp instruments might be plunged 

 deep into them, or a lighted match might be applied to the 

 sensitive region around the nail, without producing a sign 

 or a murmur. 



It is diflicult to suppose that an ordinary youth, sitting 

 with relaxed limbs in quiet unconcern, would be able to 

 control, by the exerci.se of his will, every sort of reflex start 

 ■or twitch when a naked flame is applied to one of the most 

 sensitive parts of his person. To meet such an objection, 

 however, the experiments were repeated with other subjects 

 with equal success — one of them a delicate woman, whose 

 shrinking from pain was such that the prick of a folk on 

 one of her unmesmerised fingers would cause a half- hysterical 

 cry. The hands of the subject may even be mesmerised 

 when he is in the mesmeric sleep ; and then the usual clap 

 and call restore him to consciousness, but do not permit 

 him to remove his hands from the sofa, to which they seem 

 to be glued, until after they have been separately released. 



We pass over the report of the Reichenbach committee, 

 of the literary committee, and of the committee of haunted 

 houses, but not because they do not contain a great deal of 

 very interesting and striking matter. The addresses of the 

 president, too, are models of clear, careful, and forcible 

 writing ; and the proceedings, as a whole, cannot fail to 

 produce a strong eft'ect upon a reasonably unjirejudiced 

 reader, especially when it is considered that all this is in 

 ■addition to the varying amount of testimony and experience 

 that has been for years in the possession of nearly all of 

 us. In no other subject has there been such a long 

 •dispute over the reality of the phenomena; even the 

 witnesses to globular lightning have gained credence for 

 themselves at last. No other subject, as is perfectly 

 natural, has been so inextricably mixed up with fraud and 

 chicane, and has fallen, in consequence, under such a 

 weight of obloquy. There has usually been, besides a 

 peculiarly " unwashed " flavour about the possessors of 

 these mysterious powers which are denied to people in 

 .general. The travelling mesmeriser has not been an 

 attractive specimen of humanity, and to that fact has been 

 allowed more than its due effect. In other undecided 

 scientific questions, -weight of authority has counted for 

 something, but not the weight of a man's family connec- 

 tions. Even when it was said that such unexceptionable 



witnesses as De Morgan, and Wallace, and Crookes hswl 

 become convinced that certain facts not generally admitted 

 were really facts, one could not help believing that they 

 differed in some way from the ordinary sane scientific man, 

 and that some peculiar crookedness of mental vision was 

 the source of their strange belief. Another refuge of in- 

 credulity has been national and sectional distrust ; it was 

 chiefly outside of the centres of learning that such things 

 went on. Mr. Sidgwick was once told by a German, that 

 they happened only in England or America, or France or 

 Ital}', or Russia, or some half-educated country, but not 

 in the land of geisi. If this society does not at once con- 

 vince all the world of the truth of its phenomena, it has 

 at least accomplished the feat of suddenly elevating them 

 into the region of respectability ; and hereafter any one 

 can admit his belief in them without shamefacedness. Now 

 that mesmerism and mind-reading have ceased to be ex- 

 clusively the property of travelling shows and after-dinner 

 entertainments, and have become a subject of experiment 

 in laboratories, it is to be hoped that their extent and 

 limitations will be speedUy defined, and that the vagueness 

 and haze in which they have hitherto been enveloped will 

 soon be replaced by definite knowledge. 



BRITISH SEASIDE RESORTS. 



FROM AX UNCOXVEXTIOXAL POINT OF VIEW. 

 By Percy Russell. 

 {Continued from p. 317.) 



I STATED in my initial paper that the total coast-line 

 of England and Wales approximated nearly to two 

 thousand miles, or a fourth of the diameter of the globe. 

 If, however, we add to this the still more sinuous coast-line 

 of Scotland, we shall find that the length reaches 2,700, 

 obviously very greatly in excess of England, a country 

 double the size of Scotland ; and if, again, we add for the 

 very indented coast of Ireland over 2,000 miles more, it 

 will be perceived that to thoroughly explore the very irre- 

 gular coast-line of these islands is nearly equivalent, in 

 point of extent, to a direct journey across half the world at 

 the equator ! 



The character of all coast-lines naturally depends on the 

 geological formation of the land itself. Wherever immense 

 masses of mountain offer a hard front to the sea, there the 

 coast must necessarily be bold and wild, with great 

 headlands, and probably promontories. If the shore, how- 

 ever, lies low, and is composed of soft alluvial deposits, 

 then the tide will generally hollow a bay, more or less 

 crescent in form, and a bioad and strong river flowing 

 through such flat land to the sea is sure to produce 

 estuaries : while if the water comes from mountains that 

 terminate only with the shore, we have the fiords of the 

 Norwegian peninsula or the great sea-lochs of Scotland. 



The shore of North Britain, abounding in deep indenta- 

 tions, and having on its western side a large number of 

 precipitous, rocky islands, tells its own wild story of 

 elemental warfare, and of the strenuous endeavours of the 

 stormy seas of the north to cut not only into but through 

 the land. Indeed, so numerous are the creeks, bays, and 

 Firths, that in no part of Scotland is the sea more than 

 forty miles away. 



The aspect of the shores varies greatly on the east and 

 west. On the latter side we find great mountain masses 

 stretching out at sea into grim peninsulas of terrible rocks, 

 and having a great many openings, long, but narrow, in 

 which the sea rushes with the form of a river and the 



