372 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. IV., No. 



reach its destination. Observations, except 

 for magnetism, were carried on throughout 

 their stay. The Varna was nipped b} 7 the ice, 

 Dec. 24, 1882, but did not sink until the fol- 

 lowing summer, when the crew and party took 

 refuge on the Dimfna, also beset near by, and 

 later were taken off by the steamer Obi, and 

 reached Hammerfest, Sept. 3, 1883. This was 

 the only expedition which failed to reach the 

 vicinity of the station selected before sailing. 



14. In the southern hemisphere, France sent 

 a large party, under Lieut. Courcelle Seneuil, 

 to Orange Harbor, near Cape Horn, in south 

 latitude 55° 48', longitude 67° 30' west of 

 Greenwich. Its arrival, successful operations, 

 and return without loss, have already been 

 chronicled in Science. 



15. Lastly, the German government estab- 

 lished on South Georgia, in south latitude 54°, 

 and west longitude 37°, a station under the 

 direction of Dr. C. Schrader. This expedi- 

 tion landed Aug. 21, 1882, and observations 

 were begun early in the following month. It 

 was safely embarked again in the autumn of 

 1883, without serious accident of any sort, 

 and with the required series of observations, 

 beside large collections in every branch of 

 science. 



Beside these extraordinary stations, of 

 whose doings brevit} r obliges us to give only 

 the barest intimations, nearly all the observa- 

 tories for magnetism and meteorolog} 7 in the 

 United States and Europe endeavored to co- 

 operate in the work. 



PSYCHIC FORCE. 



Although it may be regarded as doubtful 

 whether the society for the investigation of 

 psychic force, proposed at the recent meeting 

 of the American association, will result in any 

 new discoveries, yet the philosophy of the sub- 

 ject is of sufficient interest to merit general 

 consideration. The first and greatest obstacle 

 we meet with in such investigations is the ab- 

 sence of clear ideas of what it is we are to look 

 for, and how we are to distinguish between real 

 relations of cause and effect and mere chance 

 coincidences. The state of mind of the com- 

 munity at large is also unfavorable to the at- 

 tainment of any result. If we take out of it 

 two classes holding quite opposite views, — the 

 one comprising those who look upon the sub- 

 ject with that sentiment of credulity and wonder 

 which is fatal to all scientific accuracy ; and 

 the other, those who think it all nonsense, and 

 unworthy the attention of common-sense peo- 



ple, — we shall have but few left for patient 

 research. 



If, however, this remnant is going to investi- 

 gate the subject in a scientific spirit, they are 

 entitled to all the light that can be thrown upon 

 it. We begin by warning them against a kind 

 of inquiry which can lead to absolutely no con- 

 clusion. We refer to such inquiries as those 

 made in the following extract in the New- York 

 Nation of Aug. 28, 1884 : — 



Thought-transference, apparitions, etc. 



"The Society for psychical research will be grate- 

 ful for any good evidence hearing on such phenomena 

 as thought-reading, clairvoyance, presentiments, and 

 dreams, noted at the time of occurrence, and after- 

 wards confirmed ; unexplained disturbances in places 

 supposed to be haunted ; apparitions at the moment 

 of death or otherwise ; and of such other abnormal 

 events as may seem to fall under somewhat the same 

 categories." 



It would be difficult for the society to put 

 forth any thing better fitted than this advertise- 

 ment to lower the estimation in which their 

 work is held by common-sense people. Let us 

 make a little calculation showing how often co- 

 incidences of the kind sought for must really 

 occur in our country. Numerical exactness in 

 our data cannot, of course, be reached : all we 

 can do is to make rough estimates which shall 

 not be unreasonably far from the probable truth. 

 Any physician, we apprehend, will consider it 

 quite within the bounds of probability that one 

 per cent of the population of the country are 

 subject to remarkably vivid dreams, illusions, 

 visions, etc. This will make half a million 

 such people in the United States. Each of 

 these persons may be supposed to have fifty 

 friends or relations, of whom one per annum 

 dies. If they are subject to a dream or vision 

 once a week, there is one chance out of seven 

 that they have one on the same day that the 

 friend dies. Let us suppose that it takes a 

 combination of eight separate and independent 

 points of resemblance, between the vision and 

 the circumstances attending the death of the 

 friend, to constitute a remarkable coincidence, 

 and that each of these has a probability of one- 

 half. We shall have, in one case out of twa 

 hundred and fifty-six, a remarkable combina- 

 tion of coincidences. Putting these results 

 together, we may infer, that, as a matter of 

 fact, some case of extraordinary coincidence 

 between the circumstances of death, and the 

 dream or vision by a friend of the dying per- 

 son, does occur somewhere in the country 

 nearly everj^ day in the year. Thus, what the 

 Ps} r chical societ}^ will find, will be what we 

 know must exist as the result of chance coinci- 



