May 9, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



711 



soundness of this tenet: but only to right any 

 misconception which may arise from the 

 slightly ambiguous statement made by Mr. 

 Keyes in which the writer's name is men- 

 tioned. To be explicit: Mr. Keyes says: 

 " The present sharp meeting of mountain and 

 plain is now explained by causes other than 

 dislocation, through ordinary stream corro- 

 sion according to Paige." 



The writer wishes to say that in the paper 

 from which the idea above is drawn" the proc- 

 ess under discussion was the formation of cer- 

 tain sloping planated rock surfaces which 

 though likely to originate on the borders of 

 enclosed desert basins do not in the process of 

 their formation vitiate in any way the hypoth- 

 esis of basin range structure. In fact, such 

 surfaces may be used to prove (by their ele- 

 vated positions) the very existence of such 

 faults as are needed to establish the basin 

 range structure. They are but an incident in 

 a long series of changes of which basin range 

 structure itself is but a minor part. After all 

 there is nothing inherently antagonistic in 

 processes of deflation, stream erosion or block 

 faulting. All have operated and are operating 

 to-day and any explanation of physiographic 

 forms or account of physiographic history 

 which would ignore any one of them is open to 

 obvious criticism. Sidney Paige 



AN INVESTIGATION OF A " HAUNTED " HOUSE 



Called by telephone a few days ago to 

 examine a large and handsome house in the 

 Back Bay district of Boston for the reason 

 that it was acquiring an unfortunate and 

 annoying reputation as being " haunted," the 

 writer found a really serious state of affairs. 



The trouble centered in the third and fourth 

 stories, which were occupied by the children 

 and servants — the slumbers of whom were 

 disturbed by strange sensations. It was said 

 to be a common occurrence for servants to 

 awake in the night with a sensation of oppres- 

 sion, " as if some one were tapping upon me," 

 or with a " creeping feeling going all over me 

 with a feeling of being paralyzed." Sounds 



' Roek-cut Surfaces in the Desert Ranges, ' ' 

 Journal of Geology, Vol. 20, No. 5, 1912. 



were also said to be heard, as if some one were 

 walking about the house or overhead. These 

 sensations often continued after the sleeper 

 was thoroughly awake and even after the 

 lights had been turned on. The children of 

 the family, who also slept on the upper floors, 

 were similarly affected. A little boy, for ex- 

 ample, awoke one night and inquired of his 

 nurse why she had been lying on him, and 

 persisted for some time in his delusion. An- 

 other child rushed screaming into the nurse's 

 room crying that a man was waking him 

 up, and asking why she let the man frighten 

 him so. The children appeared sluggish in 

 the morning and pale, even cold water losing 

 its power to enliven them. 



These and other symptoms were well defined 

 and often repeated, and had extended over the 

 period of about two months during which the 

 family had occupied the house as tenants. 

 Upon inquiry it appeared that previous ten- 

 ants had been troubled in the same way, mat- 

 ters having reached the point where the 

 servants actually talked of seeing walking 

 apparitions. The present occupant, although 

 not entertaining any vitalistic theory of the 

 phenomena, was fully alive to the reality and 

 gravity of the situation, and anxious to find 

 the underlying cause. 



A comparatively simple and mechanistic 

 solution of the problem soon appeared. It had 

 been suspected that the trouble might have its 

 origin in undetected leaks of illuminating 

 gas, and the writer was called in to verify this 

 theory. It developed, however, that the 

 large amount of " furnace " gas escaping from 

 a viciously defective hot-air furnace was quite 

 suflicient to cause the trouble. In this fur- 

 nace the separation between the fire box and 

 the hot air ducts (upon which the hygienic 

 integrity of the apparatus depends) was badly 

 broken and as a result the inhabitants of the 

 house were bathed in an atmosphere of diluted 

 flue gases. To make matters worse, a small 

 boiler for a steam-heating system had been 

 placed within the fire box directly over the 

 fire, the effect being to cool the top of the fire 

 and so promote incomplete combustion. 



