July 11, 1884.] 



SCIENCE 



43 



ute or less, the two fingers mesmerized proved 

 to be perfectly stiff and insensible : the points 

 of sharp instruments might be plunged deep 

 into them, or a lighted match might be ap- 

 plied to the sensitive region around the nail, 

 without producing a sign or a murmur. It is 

 difficult to suppose that an ordinary youth, 

 sitting with relaxed limbs in quiet unconcern, 

 would be able to' control, by the exercise of his 

 will, every sort of reflex start or twitch when a 

 naked flame is applied to one of the most sen- 

 sitive parts of his person. To meet such an 

 objection, however, the experiments were re- 

 peated with other subjects with equal success, 

 — one of them a delicate woman, whose shrink- 

 ing from pain was such that the prick of a fork 

 on one of her unmesmerized fingers would 

 cause a half-hysterical cr}\ The hands of the 

 subject may even be mesmerized when he is in 

 the mesmeric sleep ; and then the usual clap 

 and call restore him to consciousness, but do 

 not permit him to remove his hands from the 

 sofa, to which they seem to be glued, until 

 after they have been separately released. 



We pass over the report of the Reichenbach 

 committee, of the literary committee, and of 

 the committee on haunted houses, but not be- 

 cause they do not contain a great deal of very 

 interesting and striking matter. The addresses 

 of the president, too, are models of clear, care- 

 ful, and forcible writing ; and the proceedings as 

 a whole cannot fail to produce a strong effect 

 upon a reasonably unprejudiced reader, espe- 

 cially when it is considered that all this is in 

 addition to the varying amount of testimony 

 and experience that has been for j-ears in the 

 possession of nearly all of us. In no other 

 subject has there been such a long dispute 

 over the realhVy of the phenomena : even the 

 witnesses to globular lightning have gained 

 credence for themselves at last. No other sub- 

 ject, as is perfectly natural, has been so inex- 



tricably mixed up with fraud and chicane, and 

 has fallen, in consequence, under such a weight 

 of obloquy. There has usually been, besides, 

 a peculiarly ' unwashed ' flavor about the pos- 

 sessors of these mysterious powers which are 

 denied to people in general. The travelling 

 mesmerizer has not been an attractive speci- 

 men of humanity, and to that fact has been 

 allowed more than its due effect. In other un- 

 decided scientific questions, weight of authority 

 has counted for something, but not the weight 

 of a man's family connections. Even when it 

 was said that such unexceptionable witnesses 

 as De Morgan and Wallace and Crookes had 

 become convinced that certain facts not gener- 

 ally admitted were really facts, one could not 

 help believing that the}' differed in some way 

 from the ordinary sane scientific man, and that 

 some peculiar crookedness of mental vision was 

 the source of their strange belief. Another 

 refuge of incredulity has been national and sec- 

 tional distrust : it was chiefly outside of the 

 centres of learning that such things went on. 

 Mr. Sidgwickwas once told by a German, that 

 they happened only in England or America, 

 or France or Italy, or Russia, or some half- 

 educated countiy, but not in the land of geist. 

 If this society does not at once convince all the 

 world of the truth of its phenomena, it has at 

 least accomplished the feat of suddenly elevat- 

 ing them into the region of respectability ; and 

 hereafter any one can admit his belief in them 

 without shamefacedness. Now that mesmer- 

 ism and mind-reading have ceased to be ex- 

 clusively the property of travelling-shows and 

 after-dinner entertainments, and have become a 

 subject of experiment in laboratories, it is to 

 be hoped that their extent and limitations will 

 be speedily defined, and that the vagueness and 

 haze in which the}' have hitherto been envel- 

 oped will soon be replaced by definite knowl- 

 edge. 



INTELLIGENCE FROM AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC STATIONS. 



GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONS. 



U, S. geological survey. 

 Study of metamorphic rocks. — Prof. R. D. Irving, 

 after consultation with the other lithologists of the 

 survey, and with Dr. Williams of Baltimore, is con- 

 firmed in his view of the occurrence of a secondary 

 brown hornblende (as announced by him in 1880 and. 

 in 1883) produced by the alteration of augitic min- 

 erals. This occurrence is one hitherto denied by the 

 best German authorities ; and the cases described by 



Mr. Irving have been supposed to be probably cases 

 of envelopment such as are well known to occur. 

 This, of course, has no reference to the occurrence 

 of a green hornblende as an alteration product of 

 augite. Most of the sections made by Mr. Irving 

 and his assistants, showing secondary hornblende, 

 show this variety, only a few localities yielding rocks 

 in sections of which the brown variety occurs as a 

 secondary product. 



Mr. Merriam, of Professor Irving' s division, has 

 been experimenting on the photographing of thin 



