572 B. The Zoist, vol. vii. pp. 95 - 101, contains a similar case, communicated by Mr. E. H. Barth, of the finding of a lost brooch by means of the noted clairvoyant Ellen Dawson. The account is given by a Mrs. M., the owner of the brooch. Ellen Dawson described a former servant of Mrs. M.'s, who she said had stolen the brooch, and said that she had kept the case, with some diamonds in it, in her trunk, and sold the brooch for a very small sum; that it was then in a place like a cellar, with "lots of other property," silver spoons, etc, and that the servant had moved from the place she had lived at when she first left Mrs. M. This latter point was found to be correct, and Mrs. M. (who had suspected another of her servants), on the advice of the clairvoyant, sent for the girl to come to her house, and taxed her with the theft. Finally she confessed that she had stolen the brooch and pawned it, keeping the case and two diamond chains which were worn with the brooch. All the property was finally recovered.

Mrs. M. had never seen Ellen Dawson before.

Ellen Dawson had been subject to epileptic fits as a child, for which she had been treated mesmerically, first by the Baron Dupotet, and afterwards by Mr. W. Hands, who, observing that she appeared to be able to see objects without the use of her eyes when in the sleep-waking state, endeavoured to cultivate the clairvoyant faculty in her. Some remarkable cases of her "travelling clairvoyance " are recounted by him in the Zoist, vol. iii. pp. 226-36, and the same number, pp. 236-41, contains a further account by Miss Boyle of her description of Rouen Cathedral, and incidents that had happened to Miss Boyle there, etc.

573 A. The longest and most important series of experiments in thought-transference with hypnotised subjects carried out by members of the S.P.R. are those of Professor and Mrs. Sidgwick, described in the paper by them and Mr. G. A. Smith in the Proceedings S.P.R., vol. vi. pp. 128-70, and in the paper by Mrs. Sidgwick and Miss Alice Johnson in vol. viii. pp. 536-96. I give brief extracts from both these papers.

The following is a general description of the first series of experiments, which took place in 1889: -

The experiments in thought-transference about to be described have been carried out with four different percipients while in the hypnotic trance, Mr. [G. A.] Smith, who hypnotised them, being the agent. The experiments were usually directed and arranged by Mrs. Sidgwick, who also took the notes which form the basis of the present paper. On two or three occasions, however, she was absent, and her place was taken by Professor Sidgwick, who was also present on most other occasions in July and August.

Most of the experiments were in the transference of numbers of two digits, Mr. Smith looking at the numbers and the percipient guessing them. The number of experiments of this nature tried with Mr. Smith in the same room as the percipient was 664, of which 131 were successes; and the number tried with Mr. Smith in another room was 228, of which only 9 were successes. In these numbers an experiment in which two percipients were at work at the same time is counted as two. By a success we mean that both digits are correctly given, but not necessarily placed in the right order. Of the 131 successes with Mr. Smith in the same room the digits were reversed in 14; and of the 9 successes with Mr. Smith in a different room the digits were reversed in 1. We had no numbers above 90 among those we used. If the percipients had been aware of this, the probability of their guessing the right digits in the right order in one trial by pure chance would have been 1 to 81, and the probability of their guessing the right digits in any order half that.