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Vol. XV. NEW YORK, Feeruaky 31, 1890. No. 368. 



CONrENTS: 



The Triumph Compound Steam- 



Engine 119 



The Tensile Sthensth of Sheet 



Zinc 120 



Meteorological Observations on 



Pike's Peak 132 



Health Matters. 



Contagious Pneumonia 124 



Mouth-BreathiDg and the Teeth. 124 

 Scratching the Back for Inter- 

 mittent Fever 124 



Notes and News 124 



Book-Reviews. 

 Proceedings of the Society for 



Psychical Research 128 



Absolute Measurements in Elec- 

 tricity and Magnetism 129 



A Handbook of Florida 129 



Among the Publishers 129 



Letters to the Editor. 

 Mock Sun L. W. Ledyard 133 



The Fiske Range-Finder 



Bradley A. Fiske 134 

 134 



Industrial Notes. 

 Improvements in Electric Motors 134 

 The Springfield Industrial Draw- 

 ing-Kit and Drawing-Model 

 Support 134 



B0(3K-REV1EWS. 



Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. Part XV. 

 " London, See. Psych. "Researcli. 8°. 



This number of the "Proceedings, " though dated December, 

 1889, has just come to hand. Its contents are very varied, and 

 the titles of the contributions illusively attractive. We may 

 select as the most interesting pages of the number the brief 

 preliminary report on the census of hallucinations, and Mr. 

 Barkworth"s paper on "Duplex Personality." The census of 

 hallucinations relates to the answers received to the following 

 query: "Have you ever, when believing yourself to be com- 

 pletely awake, had a vivid impression of seeing or being touched 

 by a living being or inanimate object, or of hearing a voice, 

 which impression, so far as you could discover, was not due to 

 an external physical cause?" In England 3,928 answers have 

 been received (1,633 women and 1,393 men) ; and of these, 

 363, or 13.4 per cent, have answered "yes." Of the 363, more 



than two-thirds (251) are women. The nature of the impres- 

 sion was visual in 305 cases, auditory in 115 cases, and tac- 

 tile in 24 cases. Further subdivisions are made, and several 

 interesting points suggested, which will doubtless be fully 

 considered in the complete report. Foi' this, 50,000 answers 

 are desired, and the inquiry is going on in France, Germany, 

 and the United States. In France, up to last October, 633 

 answers were received (366 from men and 161 from women) , of 

 which 106 answer "yes," the percentage of affirmative answers 

 being again much larger among women than among men (31 per 

 cent and 16 per cent) . Professor Sidgwick explains the purposes 

 of the census from a point of view certainly not that of those 

 answering the queries, and places as the very last of his re- 

 marks a caution, that should have been printed in red ink and 

 large capital letters on all pages of the blanks; namely, to 

 record separately all those who give, or are asked to give, a 

 reply because something is known or suspected of their having 

 had an hallucination. Without this precaution most strenuously 

 observed, the result can have little value in fixing tlie preva- 

 lence of hallucinations. Mr. Barkworth's essay deals very ably 

 and interestingly with those subconscious automatic phenomena 

 whose vital imjDortance in the intellectual life has been so 

 clearly shown, and not, least by the phenomena of hypnotism. 

 The tracing of the relation of these degrees of consciousness to 

 various strata of personality, and to those bizarre disintegra- 

 tions of self 'presented by morbid psychology, forms the main 

 purpose of the essay. 



To deal first with the supplement, we find an account of the 

 recent congress of experimental psychology, and especially of 

 the proceedings of the section on hypnotism, by Dr. A. T. 

 Myers, and several reviews of recent hypnotic literature by Mr. 

 F.W. H. Myers and Mr. Leaf, those by the former being rather 

 controversial in character. To deal fairly and yet critically 

 with the main papers of the number is no easy task. It is 

 all too evident, that instead of profiting by our increased 

 knowledge of the possibilities of deception, and the many side- 

 lights of psychic phenomena which this society, either directly 

 or through its antagonists, has aided and encouraged, the ex- 

 periments seem to be conducted with fewer and fewer precau- 

 tions, and speculations indulged in more and more freely. 

 This is not the place or the occasion for the detailed review of 

 the experiments on thought-transferrence offered by Professor 

 and Mrs. Sidgwick and Mr. Smith, and those of M. Eichet on 

 clairvoyance, necessary to show how much weaker the evidence 

 collected will be when clearly and logically stated. The possibili- 

 ties of those who guess the numbers drawn from a lotto-hag get- 

 ting a glimpse of what was going on does certainly not seem to 

 have been excluded by the experiments (as related) ; and noth- 

 ing can be more suggestive tlian the small number of correct 

 answers when Mr. Smith is in the next room, compared with 

 the successes when in the same room.- Professor Eichet' s 

 jubilant tone is not consistent with the facts he has to tell. 

 To sit up all night with a nervous subject holding an envelope 

 containing a playing-card in her hand, and taking an hour or 

 more to guess the card enclosed, is certainly a marvellous de- 

 votion to science. But a little more method and caution, and 

 enclosing the cards between sheets of metal- instead of in 

 envelopes, would probably be more to the purpose than this 

 devotion. We are told nothing of the history of the cards 

 from the time they were bought until placed in the envelope; 

 and so significant a fact as that court-cards were guessed rightly 

 so large a proportion of times is recorded as a peculiarity of the 

 clairvoyance; and over M. Eichet's calculation of the chances 

 in the matter one loses all patience, Tliere are also a collection 

 of notes of seances with D. D. Home, by Mr. Crookes, for 

 which there seems no sufficient raison d'etre, and the longest • 

 article of the number, by Mr. Myers, on apparitions occur- 

 ring more than a year after death. It is difficult to take Mr. 

 Myers seriously in this contribution. One always admires the 

 patience in analyzing and describing these many cases of ap- 

 paritions, but ends by suspecting that Mr. Myers's detailed 

 knowledge of the mental habits of ghosts must be telepathi- 

 cally obtained, ■ 



