most readily admit of verification or disproof. Still, something has been accomplished in each of the six departments of investigation. The committee having in charge the Reichenbach experiments felt justified in making a report about three years ago, of which the following is the tenor: 1. That three observers separately, on distinct occasions, were in some way immediately aware when an electro-magnet was secretly "made" and "unmade," under such precautions as were devised, to prevent ordinary means of knowing, and to exclude chance and deception; and the observers identified such magnetization, with luminous appearances, which, as described, agreed generally with the evidence recorded by Reichenbach. 2. That there were, though less decisively, indications of other sensory effects of magnetism. In view of these apparent confirmations of previous testimony, the committee inclined to the opinion that, among other unknown phenomena associated with magnetism there is a prima facie case for the existence, under conditions not yet determined, of a peculiar and unexplained luminosity resembling phosphorescence, in the region immediately around the magnetic poles, and visible only to certain individuals.
The committee on haunted houses has carried on widely extended investigations, despite the fun which the public prints have poked at its "ghost directory," but as yet has not made sufficient advance to warrant a report. It will strengthen our confidence in this committee's work if we recollect that it holds that the unsupported evidence of a single witness does not constitute sufficient ground for accepting an apparition as having a prima facie claim to objective reality. Under the operation of this rule, ninety-five of every hundred ghost-stories must fall to the ground.
The investigators of mesmerism are undoubtedly working in a field which has been by no means neglected in the past. They, therefore, have more definite lines of guidance than most of their colleagues. We find that they divide the main phenomena connected with the mesmeric state into three classes: (1) the dominance of a suggested idea; (2) transference of sensations, without suggestion, from operator to patient; (3) induction of general or local anæsthesia. Of these classes the committee pronounces that the first is on the high-road to universal acceptance; that the second is rarely contested, but the committee has added something to the facts already recorded in its favor, and has hope of adding more; that the third class—the production of anæsthesia—has already been established by overwhelming evidence, and is to a certain extent admitted by modern physiologists. But it remains undecided whether this anæsthesia is produced by mere expectant attention, exercised in a particular state of the nervous system, and is thus the culminating example of the dominance of a suggested idea; or, whether it is the result of the inhibition of certain sensory centers in consequence of prolonged stimulation of the peripheral ex-
