Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/389

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Collectanea. '^']%

string which formed half the link ; do not let it be seen. Show the rest of the string, a straight piece with two free ends.

I learnt this trick at school in Bristol about the end of the sixties, and it had quite escaped my memory. Within the past few years a family of confectioners has come to Clifton from one of the Italian-speaking parts of Canton Grisons, Switzerland, and I inquired of them if they knew any string tricks. One of them mentioned that he had known something of the kind as a boy, at the same time making an expressive gesture which recalled to my mind both the trick and the way to do it.

W. Innes Pocock.

CORRESPONDENCE.

Crystal-Gazing. {Supra, p. 233.)

Dr. Andrew Lang says that the questions raised by scrying and other occult phenomena "can only be settled after many long series of experiments conducted by psychological specialists working with sane and healthy subjects." (Introduction to Crystal-Gazing, by N. W. Thomas, p. xlvii.)

Dr. Lang must have read the enormous literature of the occult, and the more moderate number of modern books on psychology (Sully, Jastrow, Baldwin, and others) to small advantage if he still needs evidence that the images seen in glass balls and other reflecting objects only add to " the great cloud of witnesses " to abnormal mental activities whereby are awakened latent and unconsciously-received impressions stored in our marvellously complex brains.