ae 

tricks of memory very likely to occur. 
importance as providing evidence of the occurrence 
of telepathy are the spontaneous cases in which the 
percipient’s impression is externalised as a waking 
hallucination. The first case recorded under this 
heading (p. 152) is one of the most striking in the 
whole collection. It is one of the many cases of 
“death coincidences ” which form an important part 
of the evidence for telepathy. (Apparitions or other 
hallucinatory experiences occurring within twelve 
hours of the death, before or after it, are classed as 
phantasms of the living.) The apparition in this case 
was that of an officer of the Royal Air Force, who was. 
killed in a flying accident on December 7, 1918, and 
the percipient was a fellow-officer who spoke of his 
experience to another person before it was realised that 
it was not the living man who had appeared. 
Another interesting case in this section is a dream 
experience, first recorded in the Times of July 21, 
1904, by Mr. Rider Haggard, the percipient (p. 219). 
The dream was to the effect that a favourite retriever 
dog was lying on its side among brushwood, or rough 
growth of some sort, by water. The recorder says : 
“In my vision the dog was trying to speak to me in 
words, and, failing, transmitted to my mind in an 
undefined fashion the knowledge that he was dying.” 
Investigation showed that the dog had been killed by 
a passing train, and had fallen into a stream where 
reeds grew, at or about the time of the dream experi- 
ence. The case is well authenticated, and all the 
circumstances point to the improbability that “ mere 
coincidence ” is the true explanation. Another striking 
case is one reported by Sir George Beilby (p. 243), in 
which a percipient had a visual hallucination of her 
brother in Australia at a time when he had fallen into 
unconsciousness which lasted until his death some 
days later. 
“Collective and reciprocal cases” are dealt with 
by Mrs. Sidgwick in her final chapter. These are cases 
in which “ two or more persons have at the same time 
spontaneous psychical experiences—either hallucina- 
tions or dreams—which seem to be related to one 
another, but where no evidence of any agency outside 
the two percipients exists.” When the percipients 
were in the same room we must consider the possibility 
that one percipient may have influenced the other 
through the senses (suggestion), but where the per- 
cipients were in different rooms or in different houses, 
the relation of the one hallucinatory or dream experience 
to the other can scarcely be accounted for in this way. 
Here either chance or telepathy must be invoked. 
In concluding her examination of this collection of 
phantasms of the living, Mrs. Sidgwick describes two 
cases of reciprocal dreams, in both of which the 
NO. 2781, VOL. 111] 
NATURE 
Of more. 


[FEBRUARY 17, 1923 

dreamers were in separate houses, and in both of which 
the reciprocality seems to have been very complete. 
Reciprocal cases are rare, and the small number re- 
corded hitherto has raised some doubts as to the 
genuineness of the type; but Mrs. Sidgwick thinks 
they are very important as throwing light on the whole 
process of telepathic communi@ation. She says: “I 
think the kind of union of minds, the thinking and 
feeling together, here shown, may be regarded as the 
type or norm of telepathic communication to which 
all other cases conform in varying degrees.” This 
implies a merging together of minds, a “ transfusion ”’ 
of thought rather than a transmission or transference. 
We have the physical analogy of “ contact ” in place 
of “ transmission-through-space.” 
It can scarcely be maintained that the cases here 
passed in review afford by themselves very strong 
proof of the occurrence of telepathy, but taken in 
conjunction with the body of evidence brought forward 
by Gurney, and the many well-attested cases published 
in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 
and elsewhere, they help to strengthen the conviction, 
to which many competent observers have been forced, 
that these accounts of apparent action of mind upon 
mind in the absence of any physical medium of com- 
munication, bring to our notice some fact of Nature 
which students of science can no longer ignore. 
The most obvious, and perhaps the most serious 
defect in the evidence for telepathy afforded by these 
cases is the long interval which so frequently elapsed 
between the experience and the recording of it. In 
only rr out of rg tabulated cases was the record made 
on the day of the experience, and 4 of these were 
semi-experimental cases, in which one might have 
supposed immediate record to have been a necessary 
part of the experiment. In 15 instances the record 
was made “next day.” In most of the cases the 
interval extended for months or years, but all cases 
in which it exceeded five years are omitted from this 
collection. 
After all that has been written about the importance 
of immediate record and attestation of any presumably 
super-normal experience, it is astonishing that those 
who are subject to such experiences should so often 
neglect this elementary rule. T. W. MitcHeti. 

' The Synthetic Colour Industry. 
The Manufacture of Dyes. By Dr. John Cannell Cain. 
Pp. ix+274. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 
1922.) 12s. 6d. net. 
HE author of this treatise, which is published 
posthumously, was one of a small band of 
British chemists, who long before the war placed their 

