of the noises at night would be thus facilitated. The house belonged to the grand-nephew of a retired Indian major. It is apparently suggested that the major's relations with a young housekeeper were suspicious. The two and a native Indian servant are buried in the kirkyard at L——; presumably Logierait.

The haunted house is, as was said, at Ballechin in Perthshire; and it may be noted that to Perthshire Esdaile, the famous Calcutta hypnotist and physician, retired; but that he was unable to effect with the Perthshire people the marvellous cures he had brought about in India. Perhaps the Indian servant may have attracted the attention of some base imitator of the honourable Esdaile. It may be noted that an officer of rank, whose family were friends and not very distant neighbours in the south of England of the late Rev. Lord Sydney Godolphin Osborne, experienced some singular phenomena. Lord Sydney was a great hypnotist, and cured, or believed he cured, many cases of epilepsy. The officer in question suffered at times from a tickling in his face, which annoyed him very much; it seemed to be more on the cheeks than in the corners behind the nostrils.

The connection with hypnotism is seen in the next case. A much younger man, a captain in the Indian army, who had attended many spiritist seances, suffered much the same sort of tickling annoyance. Both were perfectly sane, and were doubtless persecuted. They were intelligent, capable people. A friend informs the writer that when some years ago he visited a fortune-teller of the Mrs. Piper class in London, he had a cold trickling up his feet, doubtless from hypnotism, to help thought reading.

The tickling of the face is the result of a more or less vain attempt to reach the ear or eye. It will be felt by people driving whose ear and eye would otherwise be affected. People sleeping in an exposed place may suffer more, as the fixed recumbent position makes them obnoxious to attack, as was previously remarked. The hyperaesthesia spreads in a slight degree round the eye.

The nature of the eye is hardly understood yet; it is quite possible that subconscious pictures pass before us like a cinematograph, enforcing or enforced by our thoughts. It has been remarked that thought is a species of self-hypnotism. Hypnotism may only make these pictures more distinct and modify them by degrees. In the attempt to inflict a picture on the eye, only the dark image of it may be seen. The writer believes that this means failure to affect the mind. Binet and Féré mention the dark after-shadow.

The extremest direct effect of hypnotism upon the eye, mechanically speaking, is doubtless scarcely more than the shock of thistledown wafted against it by a gentle breeze. It appears to affect the corners of the eye; the electric film is perhaps divided by the approach over the skin to another and damper tissue. But hyperaesthesia sometimes spreads to the upper cheek.

Madame de Maceine saw Rubinstein's hallucinatory picture with the corner of her eye.[22] A shock even as slight as a bit of thistledown blown against the cornea might be ill—timed at a street-crossing. Mr. S. of B—— was run over in the streets of London and killed. He had been previously hypnotically affected, for he heard quantities of raps; these were no friendly signs of spirits, but the affection of his early hypnotists practising against him.

[Footnote 22: Vide a leading article, Daily News, July 23.]

A double image is seen, the eye being curiously affected, when for instance the knobs of a chest of drawers appeared through the apparition.

The vision is in the veil or mist of Ibn Khaldoon. Does not this cast a light upon the conceptive and receptive powers of the eye. The conceptive power is shown, as Binet and Féré remark, by the fact that our imagination has done away with the end of a nerve which should be seen at every instant of our lives. Light images may be given by feeble hypnotists of which but the dark reaction can be detected only once in a way. Compare Binet and Féré. They are perhaps noted when hypnotic speech does not come off and is not heard. The small vision in one eye only is separate from the landscape, and practically does not much influence the mind of the person on whom it is inflicted, who continues aware that it is a mere delusion, causing scarcely anything but trifling interruption. This is perhaps only the case with the few, more numerous however amongst the strong nations than amongst the weaker ones, who are impervious to ordinary hypnotism, or could only be hypnotised if extraordinarily fatigued.

The development of intelligence and perhaps endurance increases the number of these. I imagine the students in Germany, whom Heidenhain found so superior to our British students, were not only better educated, as is usual, but were also fighting club men, hardened to pain, and very superior to the bulk of their British contemporaries in courage and endurance.

The word skin-deep hypnotism might well be applied to the cases just mentioned. To show instances of its criminal use. Hypnotism has been used, there is reason to believe, against an Austrian ambassador in Petersburg, who found his papers in disorder, and saw a pale young man in his study. Ordering the gates to be closed, he was told by the porter that no one had entered, but that the ghost of the son of a former ambassador—a lad the writer knew who died at the Embassy—haunted the house. The ghost was therefore a hallucination inflicted on the ambassador. Stepniak's death at a level-crossing on a railway, might be brought about as Mr. Stewart's was in the street. Prince Alexander of Battenburg's mental prostration might be brought about by the same means when he was kidnapped.

At the time of the dispute between England and Russia, caused by Penjdeh, a Greek naval officer showed a slightly indiscreet attachment for England. Shortly afterwards he was removed for a time from the post he held, as he was considered not quite sane; he had been at Copenhagen, He was, however, restored to the navy, as it was considered rather good for his health than otherwise that he should go to sea. He and an English diplomatist at Copenhagen had been at Fiume together on duty, and the former was undoubtedly tricked by hypnotists, pretending to be acting for freemasonry, a trick played since on another person, and before in England on a third. It has also been played in Italy long ago. The voices would be taken for ventriloquists, whilst scenes heard would be considered to be perceived in catalepsy by a person in good health, and in full possession of his faculties, if not a doctor. At Fiume is the Whitehead torpedo manufactory, but as the hammering and other noises connected with it would prevent the chief persons in charge of the factory from being got at, the hypnotists were doubtless foiled there. Of course they may have got some information indirectly, but nothing of high value.

The alarm produced at B—— House was brought about less by the phenomena than by the pressure on the vagus nerve or heart. Whether fatal syncope can be produced by modifying the heart beats, as Mr. Vincent suggests it can, is of course a question for a doctor. He seems to think such cases not uncommon. A gentleman attacked by hypnotists twice suffered from syncope. He was previously suffering from exhaustion brought on by rowing a party for their lives in a squall, and took strychnine at a doctor's orders; that medicament, as is known, makes the nerves more sensitive. Further rascally attempts were a failure in better-situated houses. The terror of hearing a voice suddenly is in those circumstances very great; against one in good health it is less, no doubt. The trouble given at B—— was particularly great in the case of Miss Moore,[23] who scarcely slept for a week; she was Miss Freer's comrade in No. 1, the S.W.