REPRODUCTION.
Double object.—It was now that I arranged the double object between Miss R——d and Miss E., who happened to be sitting nearly facing one another. [See Nature, June 12th, 1884.] The drawing was a square on one side of the paper, a cross on the other. Miss R——d looked at the side with the square on it. Miss E. looked at the side with the cross. Neither knew what the other was looking at—nor did the percipient know that anything unusual was being tried. Mr. Birchall was silently asked to take off his attention and he got up and looked out of window before the drawings were brought in, and during the experiment. There was no contact. Very soon Miss R. said, "I see things moving about.... I seem to see two things.... I see first one up there, and then one down there.... I don't know which to draw.... I can't see either distinctly." (Well, anyhow, draw what you have seen.) She took off the bandage and drew first a square, and then said, "Then there was the other thing as well ... afterwards they seemed to go into one," and she drew a cross inside the square from corner to corner, adding afterwards, "I don't know what made me put it inside."
No. 7.—By HERR MAX DESSOIR.
In June 1885 some successful experiments in thought-transference were made by Herr Dessoir, of Berlin, author of A Bibliography of Modern Hypnotism, and other works, with the co-operation of some friends, Herren Weiss, Biltz, and Sachse. There were in all eighteen trials with diagrams in which Herr Dessoir was the percipient. The diagrams which follow—reproduced from the original drawings—were the result of six consecutive trials. They are, as will be seen, not completely successful, but they convey a fair idea of the amount of success attained in the whole series. It should be noted that the impression received by the percipient appears to have been persistent; and that the second attempt at reproduction, in five out of the six cases, was more successful than the first. Herr Dessoir states that he was generally out of the room whilst the figure was being drawn; he returned at the given signal, with eyes closely bandaged; "I set myself at the table, and in many instances placed my hands on the table, and the agent placed his hands on mine; the hands lay quite still on one another. When an image presented itself to my mind, the hands were removed ... and I took off the bandage and drew my figure."
A full account of these experiments, and of others conducted by Herr Dessoir, will be found in Proc. S.P.R., vol. iv. pp. 111-126; vol. v. pp. 355-357.
I.
REP. 1. REP. 2.