696 
strate the immortality of the soul within a 
year,’ that it is due to the facts bearing upon 
the choice between materialism and spiritism 
to say that I have never made any such profes- 
sions as have been alleged. I wish to make 
this statement, because I shall leave no excuse 
in my report of my facts for judging of them 
from that point of view. Whether they have 
any value or not I do not care to say, as I am 
not the person to urge that view of them. I 
merely wish the scientific public that still has 
the bad habit of reading and believing the 
newspapers to know that I was careful to deny 
that I made any such pretensions as were so 
generally attributed to me. More than one- 
half the interviews alleged to have been held 
with me were the fabrications of reporters who 
never saw me, and the other half omitted what 
I did say and published what I did not say. 
There would be no reason to make this correc- 
tion at all except that the wide currency given 
to a pretension that I never entertained creates 
a standard by which I am far from estimating 
the facts myself, and much less can I expect 
others to treat it with respect. It is true that 
I have reversed my preferences in the choice 
between spiritism and materialism on account 
of ten years study of the Piper case, but I have 
done so on grounds that must force respect, 
even when they do not produce conviction; and 
the only object I had in facing public scorn was 
to make it as respectable to study these phe- 
nomena as it is to investigate insanity and other 
abnormal facts. There is’ a perfectly inexcus- 
able cowardice in the attitude of scientific men 
toward the claims of spiritualism, and they are 
treated with a contempt which men would be 
ashamed to exhibit toward the phenomena of 
insanity. Hence having a body of facts for 
which I can safely demand consideration on 
some theory, I have only thrown down the 
gauntlet to those who have not accepted tele- 
pathy and simply ask that they turn the bal- 
ance in favor of that hypothesis, instead of the 
spiritistic for which I have merely declared a 
preference, but which I should be the first to 
surrender, if science establishes a preference for 
the infinite in a woman’s skull. But what I 
shall have to report must not be estimated as 
an attempt to demonstrate anything even to 
SCIENCE. 
[N. 8. Vou. X. No. 254. 
myself, to say nothing of those who have 
neither studied the subject nor taken the pains 
to question the authority of respectability. 
JAMES H. HysuLop. 
CoLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 
NEw YORK. 
NOTES ON ORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 
In the usual methods of quantitative analysis 
by electrolysis, the cathode is usually a platinum 
cone or cylinder, giving greater current on the 
exterior than in the interior, and an unequal 
deposition of the metallic deposit. In Oettel’s. 
improvement a platinum plate is used as cath- 
ode, with a fork-shaped anode, one arm on 
each side of the cathode. This is only partially 
successful in overcoming the difficulties, the 
deposit tending especially to scale off. In the 
Berichte, Clemens Winkler suggests the use of 
platinum gauze as a kathode. The metal is 
deposited very regularly even with strong cur- 
rent. It is in the form of a cylinder around 
each thread of gauze, is compact, firmly de- 
posited, and shows no tendency to scale off, 
even at very considerable current strength. 
The time required is only about one-fourth as 
great as with the old form of electrode. Many 
solutions are therefore available which could 
not otherwise be used, as, for example, copper 
is readily deposited in large quantities from its. 
sulfate solution. 
In the last number of the Bulletin of the 
French Chemical Society, Weisberg gives a large 
series of experiments as to the power of aque- 
ous solutions of sugar to dissolve lime. The 
amount which can be thus dissolved is about 27 
grams of lime per 100 grams of dissolved sugar. 
In solution with very little sugar the relative 
amount of lime taken up is larger than this, but. 
the absolute amount is of course small. Pre- 
vious observations are confirmed that lime in 
its anhydrous form, CaO, is more soluble in 
sugar solutions than is its form of calcium hy- 
droxide or milk of lime. 
SomE time since the use of calcium carbid as. 
a reducing substance for high temperatures was 
suggested by Warren. This subject has now 
been worked up by Tarrugi in the Gazetta, and 
he finds most metallic salts are decomposed 
