730 Solar Influence on Organisms. [December, 
other end, so as to raise the key from the table and keep it 
suspended, it was impossible to keep it still, in spite of all 
precautions. Oscillations would begin which, if the hands 
were warm, would attain great violence. If the key were 
permitted to strike against anything except glass, silk, dry 
rusty iron, or other bad conductors of electricity, the oscilla- 
tions would be interrupted by short pauses occurring at 
regular intervals; and the strokes between these pauses 
would correspond with the age of the hair, or, more cor- 
rectly, their number would show how many years old the 
person was when he lost it. I understood that these oscil- 
lations were caused by electricity ; that the key was posi- 
tively or negatively charged and repelled by the arm and 
hand, which were similarly charged. 
I have since investigated this phenomenon, as much as 
my time has allowed, and I shall here carefully give the 
results of my experiments. I have also substituted electri- 
city from other sources than that used in those primitive 
experiments, and when I have not met the same success it is 
due to the faCt that I am not a practical electrician. 
There is no known principle that accounts for the pauses 
in the oscillations. But the explanation seems to be that — 
When any organic substance is continually charged by posi- 
tive or negative electricity, and discharged in rapid suc- 
cession, under certain circumstances, the substance itself, 
and things in contaCt with it, will, after a certain number of 
discharges, for a moment become non-conduCtors; and the 
number of those discharges will correspond to the age of 
the vegetable or animal from which the substance is derived. 
I say “ under certain circumstances,” for I do not know 
whether repulsion and attraction is necessary or not. My 
experiments have always been with a suspended key, except 
with a metallic spring, placed horizontally, which is virtually 
the same thing. The resistance to electricity during the 
pause is, indeed, very slight ; it does not take a very power- 
ful charge to overcome it. The weaker the supply of elec- 
tricity the better it is. Shortening the fibre by which the 
key is suspended will give the best results. It will make the 
oscillations more rapid, and they ought to be rapid enough 
to make it necessary to count them by twos, for the pause 
will thus be better noticed. 
All organic substances possess this age-telling property, 
except absolute non-conduCtors, as silk. If substances of 
different ages are used together, the age of the oldest only 
is shown. This faCt makes it possible to find the age of 
substances of all forms, even with a suspended key. A fibre 
