XXVI] FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES 49 



about science, though no doubt it was very useful in its way. 

 Of course it helped us to find coal, " and that kind of thing," 

 to support our manufactures ; chemistry, too, very useful, 

 dyeing, manure, and many other things — and thus he went 

 on, with a lot of commonplaces hardly up to the level of 

 an audience of tenant-farmers, for, I suppose, nearly an hour ; 

 and then there were complimentary speeches ! The address 

 — or rather an address — was, of course, printed, but I never 

 read it, as I felt sure it would be so altered and almost 

 wholly remodelled that it would not at all resemble the 

 poor stuff we had been compelled to hear. 



At Glasgow, in 1876, I was President of the Biological 

 Section, and our meeting was rendered rather lively by the 

 announcement of a paper by Professor W. F. Barrett on 

 experiments in thought-reading. The reading of this was 

 opposed by Dr. W. B. Carpenter and others, but as it had 

 been accepted by the section, it was read. Then followed a 

 rather heated discussion ; but there were several supporters 

 of the paper, among whom was Lord Rayleigh, and the 

 public evidently took the greatest interest in the subject, 

 the hall being crowded. After having studied the matter 

 some years longer. Professor Barrett, with the assistance of 

 the late Frederick Myers, Professor Sidgwick, Edmund 

 Gurney, and a few other friends, founded the Society for 

 Psychical Research, which has collected a very large amount 

 of evidence and is still actively at work. 



I and my wife were entertained at Glasgow by Mr. and 

 Mrs. Mirlees, and at one of their dinner-parties we enjoyed 

 the company of William Pengelly, of Torquay, the well- 

 known explorer of Kent's Cavern, whose acquaintance I had 

 made some years before while spending a few days at 

 Torquay with my friend and publisher, Mr. A. Macmillan. 

 He sat on one side of our hostess, and I and my wife on the 

 other, and during the whole dinner he kept up such a flow of 

 amusing and witty conversation that the entire party (a 

 large one) looked at us with envy. He was certainly among 

 the most genial and witty men I have ever met, and could 

 make even dry scientific subjects attractive by his humorous 



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