BOOk' NOTICES. 651 



A Manual for Commissioners of the Circuit Courts of the United 

 States. Prepared by Warren Watson. Callaghan & Co., Chicago, 1882. 



Mr. Watson has been Clerk of the Western District of Missouri for a number 

 of years and has acquired a familiarity with the forms of practice not readily at- 

 tained otherwise. Not only are all the duties and powers, qualifications of commis- 

 sioners, systematically and clearly set forth, but all the forms used in proceedings 

 before them and the opinions of several of our best Federal judges touching 

 doubtful points in connection with the office, in full in this Manual. 



A second edition having been so soon called for is an evidence of its value 

 to the profession. 



Transcendental Physics. By Johann Carl Friedrich Zdllner. Boston; Colby 

 & Rich, 1881. 



This is an account of experimental investigations in spiritualism by the author, 

 translated from the German by Charles Carleton Massey, a barrister at-law, of 

 London, who also furnishes a comprehensive preface to the work. 



In this preface he regrets the indisposition on the part of the public to see 

 in the alleged phenomena of spiritualism a simple question of evidence, and claims 

 that it is only from this point of view that it should be regarded, since the only 

 elements of fallacy possible to be added by testimony, to original observation, 

 are such as may result from defects of veracity, defects of memory, defects of 

 judgment and defects of language, or the understanding of it by the recipient of 

 the testimony. He also asserts that, to himself at least, so-called spiritualism re- 

 presents no religious craze or sectarian behef, but an aggregation, (not yet to be 

 called a system) of proven facts of incalculable importance to science and specu- 

 lation Those who so regard the subject would adhere to their convictions of 

 its truth and importance even though it were shown that every medium was a 

 fraud and many spiritualists their willing dupes. Much of the evidence upon 

 which they rely was taken on that very assumption, and the precautions taken 

 had these suspicions in view. 



The readers' attention is called to the work of Prof. Zdllner by the transla- 

 tor as a volume of facts and evidences, and all that is asked by him is " a fair 

 judgment on the facts themselves." 



Turning to the author himself, we find a discussion of Gauss' and Kants* 

 theories of the four dimensions of space and a suggestion that the explanation 

 of such acts in spiritualism as table-tipping and moving, tying of knots on endless 

 cords, etc., may be found in the theory that "spiritual beings may exist in space, 

 and the latter still remain penetrable for material beings, because their presence 

 would imply an acting power in space, but not a filling of it, i. e., a resistance 

 causing solidity." These spiritual beings he calls " four-dimensional," and 

 claims that "an intelligent being having the power voluntarily to produce on an 

 endless cord four-dimensional bendings and movements, must be able without 



