September 4, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



313' 



tory of Paris. The enlargement is such as to 

 give a diameter to the entire disk of the moon 

 of more than three' meters and, as the photo- 

 graphs are 30x24 cm., there are a large number 

 of separate sheets. The definition in these 

 photographs is said to be admirable. 



The ethics of quotation without assigning the 

 source of the information are somewhat com- 

 plex. We aim always to give credit to its 

 source when we take a note from a journal that 

 has in fact or apparently received the informa- 

 tion at first hand. Our excellent contemporary, 

 the Revue Scientifique does not seem to adopt this 

 point of view, but finds Science of weekly use. 

 In the current number it goes so far as to take 

 from Nature, without credit, an account of Mr. 

 Lindenkohl's observations on the Gulf Stream, 

 (which Nature properly credited to Science), 

 but states quite correctly (as quoted by Nature 

 from this Journal), that this apparently orig- 

 inal information will be published in a report 

 of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. 



In Appleton^s Popular Science Monthly for Sep- 

 tember will be found an article by President 

 David Starr Jordan, entitled ' The Sympsycho- 

 graph,' the contents of which are even more 

 extraordinary than its title. The writer of this 

 note was at first under the impression that the 

 article was intended as a parody on newspaper 

 literature regarding X-rays and psychical re- 

 search, but this will certainly not be the opinion 

 of readers of the Monthly. President Jordan's 

 first paragraph is as follows : 



' ' The Astral Camera Club, of Alcalde, was organ- 

 ized in November, 1895, for purposes of scientific re- 

 search through the medium of photography. The 

 function of the club was the cooperative study of 

 man's latent psychical powers, that these might be 

 helpful in the conduct of life. No powers granted 

 man should be neglected or allowed to waste in idle- 

 ness. Just as the great physical force of electricity 

 remained for centuries hidden and known only by 

 casual and unimportant manifestations, so the great 

 odic forces within man are still scantily revealed. 

 The method of the club in Alcalde was to be that of 

 the most rigid scientiiic research. It was to take up, 

 one after another, the discoveries of our eager century 

 as they were made known to the world through the 

 medium of the daily newspaper. To these were to 

 be added those suggestions which alert intuition and 



psychic practicality would naturally suggest. No hy- 

 pothesis in science was to be rejected beforehand, and 

 no prejudice was to stand in the way of the reception 

 of any new theory that might contain a living truth. ' ' 



President Jordan then proceeds to describe the 

 alleged photographs of the retina by Messrs. 

 Rogers and Lee, and states that their full signifi- 

 cance was first brought out at a meeting of the 

 Astral Camera Club on April 1st: "The su- 

 premacy of mind over matter, already indicated, 

 in a hundred ways, was thus splendidly il- 

 lustrated. As a thousand miles of ether may 

 be made to vibrate, at the command of the will! 

 of the psychic adept, so may the grosser forms 

 of matter be shaken or removed when this 

 subtle and resistless force acts upon it. ' ' 



Later in the article will be found a description 

 of an experiment made with an instrument ex- 

 hibited by Mr. Marvin, the president : 



"He had devised a camera with a lens having 

 curved facets arranged on the plan of the eye of the- 

 fly. To each one of the seven facets led an insulated, 

 tube provided within by an electric connection, sO' 

 that electric or odic impulses could be transferred 

 from the brain or retina through the eye of each dif- 

 ferent observer to the many -faced lens. From the lens 

 these impulses would be converged on a sensitive 

 plate, as the rays of light are gathered together in 

 ordinary photography. From the members of the 

 Camera Club, seven of those having greatest animal 

 magnetism and greatest power of mental concentra- 

 tion were chosen for the experiment. Connection was 

 made from the eye of these observers to the cor-- 

 responding parts of the lens ; then all were to remain 

 in utter darkness and perfect silence, each person fix- 

 ing his mind on a cat." 



The composite ' psychograph' of the cat is 

 reproduced * ' in advance of the publication oi 

 the regular bulletin of the Society in which the 

 apparatus used is figured in detail. ' ' We must 

 admit that we may need at any time to begin 

 our science over again from the beginning, but 

 President Jordan and the editors of Appleton's^ 

 Popular Science Monthly take great responsibility 

 in dating this from a meeting of ' The Astral 

 Camera Club.' 



We regret to criticize a second article in Ap- 

 pleton''s Popular Science Monthly, a journal which 

 accomplishes so mvich foo- the diffusion of scien- 

 tific knowledge, but an extended editorial article 

 on the speech by Lord Kelvin, on the occasion.. 



