I884.J 
Analyses of Books. 
489 
tion, a mental image, of the writing which he had previously 
made. It is true that a somnambulist may write well though a 
sheet ot pasteboard is interposed between his eyes and the 
writing-paper. If he has not crossed a t, nor dotted an i, and is 
requested to supply the omission, he may do so with great pre- 
Cision. ut if the paper be shifted, his corrections are no longer 
in their right places on the paper, but wrong to the extent to 
wnich the paper has been moved.” 
A certain lady, named here Madame X, whose case was pub- 
lshed in i860 by M. Mesnet, wrote letters accurately in a room 
?° „iL that her Physician could not distinguish the objects in 
1 , Upended, however, upon her sight was shown 
y the fact that when an opaque body was placed between her 
eyes and the paper she stopped writing, and was much dis- 
turbed. 
T he sense of hearing is in some cases good, but in others is 
totally, suspended. Similarly with smell, though one of the 
author’s correspondents often in his attacks dreams of an escape 
of gas, and in his sleep searches for the gas-pipe, though there 
is no gas laid on in the house. There is often insensibility to 
pain, accompanied with an extreme delicacy of touch and an ab- 
normal acuteness of the muscular sense. 
Epidemic somnambulism is an exceedingly curious phenome- 
non, and not very rare. 
Since at the present day “ Mesmerism ” has penetrated even 
to the Royal Institution, where a crocodile has been successfully 
operated upon, this work will prove exceedingly useful to all who 
are desirous of studying that intricate subject from every possible 
point of view. 
A Treatise on Earthy and other Minerals , and Mining. By D. 
C. Davies, F.G.S. London : Crosby Lockwood and Co. 
This volume is a practical handbook of those minerals which 
are in common life described as non-metallic. Thus we have 
here the “ ores,” as they are now called, of sulphur and of phos- 
phorus, carbon and its compounds, silica, borax, and their allies. 
Others of the minerals here described are in reality metallic, 
but the metals which they contain are not often used in the me- 
tallic state. Thus everyone now knows that barium, calcium, 
&c., are metals, but in the metallic state they are merely labora- 
tory curiosities. Concerning sodium and aluminium doubts may 
be raised. The time is probably not distant when the latter, at 
least, may play a part almost as important in the free or metallic 
condition as it does in its salts. Such at least will be 
the opinion of all who have seen the beautiful alloys manufac- 
VOL. VI. (THIRD SERIES) 2 K 
