927 A. From Proceedings S.P.R., vol. ix. p. 119. In the following case the phenomena described were various, but consisted mainly of automatic writing and speech. Some of the writings evinced a knowledge greater than the automatist possessed. Especially two lines from Homer were correctly written in response to a request for some Greek, although the writer was certainly quite ignorant even of the Greek alphabet. Some indications of identity were also given.

Certain physical phenomena (the most important of which occurred in my informant's absence) were interpolated, as it were, at random among the intellectual phenomena, and carried with them no clear indication of their source; except that they occurred only in the presence of the sitter here styled Mr. Andrew.

For my introduction to Mr. O. (as I shall call him), the narrator of these incidents, I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Andrew Lang. I first heard Mr. O.'s narrative from himself by word of mouth on November 20th, 1889, while the events were still fresh in his memory. I regard him as an excellent witness. The delay in producing the evidence has been partly caused by Mr. O.'s persistent but unavailing efforts to induce the survivors among his fellow-sitters to add their testimony to his own. I have reason to believe that their refusal is in no way due to any disagreement with Mr. O.'s account, but mainly to scruples of a quasi-religious nature. Such scruples have repeatedly baulked our inquiries; but I hope that they may gradually die out among our informants, as the innocence and the importance of experiments of this kind come to be better understood. In Mr. O.'s own case there are, I think, amply sufficient reasons why his anonymity should be preserved. His brother - in defer-ence to whose serious wish during dangerous illness the sittings were undertaken - is now dead.

I will add that the intimacy among the members of the circle was such that I cannot doubt that Mr. O. heard, without delay, from his brother and others, of the physical phenomena which had occurred during his own absence from the circle. Mr. O. writes in 1890:-

In the winter of' 88-9 I began, along with a few intimate friends, to investigate the phenomena commonly called Spiritualistic. None of the company was at all anxious for any specific communication from another sphere, but partly for the gratification of an invalid brother, and partly for the sake of satisfying ourselves as to the possibility of some things we had read, we attempted a sitting. The results far exceeded our expectation. We were favoured with phenomena somewhat startling to novices in the art - phenomena styled in Scotland uncanny - but their interesting nature soon overcame our natural diffidence, and before the end of the winter we were on quite familiar terms with our unsubstantial vistants.

As a rule the circle consisted of two of my brothers, two personal friends, and myself, though occasionally we admitted other members of the family, and once or twice an acquaintance. We were not Spiritualists, nor had we any desire to be known as such; all we did was done solely by way of experiment and amusement. The opportunity was the best possible; we had all our sittings in our own home, the circle was confined to personal friends in whom we had full confidence, so that there was neither motive nor opportunity for deception. We usually met twice a week when my invalid brother was able for company, but during the winter months relapses of his illness caused interruptions; and indeed, I often thought the excitement of our sittings did not affect him beneficially.

Our sittings were all in the dark. Our medium was, in most cases, Mr. Andrew, though we had also a less efficient medium in the case of Mr. S--.

The performances of the latter were mostly of a somnambulistic kind, and do not call for special notice.

With Andrew, however, phenomena assumed quite another aspect. He would play charming music on the violin, or produce beautiful pencil sketches of city and rural scenes. Sometimes the locus of these scenes was named, oftener not, but they were invariably unknown to any member of the company.

For a time I failed to see anything very unaccountable in Andrew's trance productions. I knew him to be an accomplished violinist and a fairly good sketcher, and I naturally put everything down to an unconscious exercise of his own skill. One little thing did perplex me, namely, the very different styles of handwriting he seemed to accomplish with equal facility.

I mentioned an invalid brother. He suffered from a heart affection known as presystolic murmur. At one sitting we consulted a medical man, who called himself Dr. Snobinski of Russia. This gentleman not only prescribed for my brother, but also furnished us with a diagram of the human heart, and put a special mark to indicate the valve diseased in my brother's case. How this diagram was actually drawn by a person ignorant of human physiology, and how the diseased valve was shown and explained by one ignorant of pathology, was more than I could account for.