January 29, 1886.] 



SCIENCE. 



91 



playing in a football match on Dec. 28. The de- 

 ceased, who was playing a very fast game, slipped 

 and fell, and at the same time received a severe 

 kick, probably in the abdomen, while several other 

 players fell upon him. His death resulted from 

 hemorrhage, arising from injuries to the internal 

 organs. The Lancet goes on to say, " If proof of 

 this [the dangerous character of the game as played 

 in England] be wanted, it is furnished by the fact 

 that this is at least the third fatal accident directly 

 due to football already recorded thus early in the 

 season." 



The heavy mortality among the Baptist 

 missionaries in the Kongo country has led Dr. 

 Prosser James to write a series of letters, embody- 

 ing descriptions of the principal diseases of tropical 

 countries. These letters are entitled ' Health on 

 the Kongo,' and are intended for circulation 

 among the missionaries and the station officials 

 of the Kongo Free State. It is to be hoped that 

 Dr. James has in this way contributed to the well- 

 being of the voluntary exiles in central Africa. 

 Mr. Stanley still persists, that, with care, a European 

 may successfully resist the inroads of the malarial 

 influences to which he subjects himself on emi- 

 grating to the banks of that river ; and every 

 particle of wisdom which it is possible to impart 

 on how to travel in Africa, how to locate a station, 

 how to eat, dress, work, and sleep, must be a god- 

 send to the adventurers. It is just such informa- 

 tion that the letters are intended to give. 



At the last annual meeting of the trustees of 

 the Mount Auburn cemetery of Boston, Mass., it 

 was voted that the trustees consider the expediency 

 of establishing a crematorium, or of adopting any 

 other method of taking care of the dead so that 

 the sanitary law shall not be violated. The com- 

 mittee appointed, consisting of Mr. Roger Wolcott 

 and Dr. R. M. Hodges, report that the acts of 

 incorporation of the cemetery only permitted 

 interment. Cremation has been legalized by the 

 legislature of Massachusetts during the past year, 

 and the cemetery will be prepared to receive for 

 sepulture the ashes resulting from the process of 

 incineration, and would prepare depositories above 

 ground, or columbaria in the hill-sides, for the 

 reception and preservation of urns and other 

 memorials. The3e actions of the legislature and 

 trustees are worthy of note, as showing the wide 

 interest cremation is now attracting in America, 

 as well as in Europe. 



RECENT PSYCHICAL RESEARCHES. 



The American society for psychical research 

 held its annual meeting on Jan. 11 last, at Boston, 

 the headquarters of the society. There has been 

 a steady and rapid growth in the number of asso- 

 ciates ; and, as the various committees are now 

 well organized and at work, it is hoped that the 

 society will display still greater vitality in the 

 future. This fair prospect has, however, been 

 disturbed in one respect by the president of the 

 society, Prof. Simon Newcomb, whose address was 

 read at the meeting. He devoted his attention to 

 the work that has been done upon thought-trans- 

 f errence, especially by the original English society, 

 and endeavored to discredit the investigations and 

 conclusions published by the English committee. 

 In brief, Professor Newcomb's position is, that the 

 phenomena of thought-transf errence, as heretofore 

 recorded, are very rare and quite unexplained. 

 Now, they may be due, he says, either to an un- 

 known law of nature displayed under conditions 

 we cannot control, or else to special circum- 

 stances which are unknown to us. In the former 

 case we might compare the phenomena with those 

 of electricity, which were at first rare, obscure, 

 and beyond our control. Professor Newcomb, 

 however, turns all his arguments in favor of the 

 second alternative ; but, as briefly indicated in our 

 comments this week, his logic is open to criticism. 

 The length of the address precludes a fuller discus- 

 sion of it before its publication. 



Dr. H. P. Bowditch gave an informal account 

 of some experiments, which indicated to a slight 

 extent the power of reproducing drawings by 

 thought-transferrence. Dr. C. S. Minot presented 

 the results of an analysis of the figures obtained 

 from the attempts to transfer the thought of a 

 single digit from one person's mind to another's. 

 It was noticed in the returns of experiments 

 that there was one case in which the person 

 guessed a larger number of digits correctly than 

 was probable on mere chance. Now, it so hap- 

 pened that this person displayed the, presumably 

 unconscious, habit of guessing the digits by skip- 

 ping irregularly by two or three numbers from 0, 

 1, or 2, up to 8 or 9, and then back again. When, 

 therefore, the thousand digits upon his record of 

 guesses were tabulated, the result was obtained, 

 that, upon the average, the fourth digit guessed 

 by him before a 9 was 3.3 ; the third, 3.4 ; the 

 second, 4.2 ; the first. 5.4. After a 9 he guessed 

 down the scale with equal regularity. No other 

 person showed this peculiarity : hence it was 

 evident that this guesser had followed out Iris 

 personal psychological bent, and had not been 

 readhig the mind of the agent, who had thought 



