HERE AND THERE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2929, 4 May 1910, Page 82

HERE AND THERE.

—Spiritualists Challenged.—■ A remarkable challenge has just been made to al l who believe in Spiritualism as practised at seances—whether in spirit forms, palmistry, telepathy, clairvoyance, or the visions of trance mediums. A well-known investigator, Mr Wm. Marriott, now somes forward to prove his opinion that every seance at which such phenomena occur is simply an exaggerated conjuring entertainment. Mr Marriott declares that of 21 mediums with whom he has sat, he has proved 20 to be fraudulent. And he affirms that he is able to produce by physical or natural means all the effects of the Spiritualists. He issues a challenge to such distinguished investigators as Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Professor Alfred Russell Wallace, who, with others, have lent their reputations to the furtherance of spiritualistic beliefs. Can they produce evidence of genuine phenomena, and will they or anyone else allow Mr Marriott to investigate seances which in their judgment are above suspicion? He points out that many people who go to seances have suffered recent bereavement. They are attracted by the chance of communicating with departed friends. And it is on their emotions and affections that the mediums trade. —Bogus Spirits.— At one seance Mr Marriott caught a bogus spirit in his arms while a friend turned en & strong, light—revealing a medium dressed in filmy robes. At another a ghost who whistled without moving his lips was found to have an accomplice who whistled for him. The pretty picture of an angelic choir of- three forms, singing melodiously, was found to be due to human beings sitting in luminous garments on a light ladder covered with black felt. A well-known effect produced at seances is for a spirit form to emerge from the side of a medium, who lies at length on a couch in a trance. Mr Marriott received permission to photograph a spirit of this sort, and secured a very good picture. He noticed that when the sitting began the couch was close to the wall. When the sitting was over there was a space between couch and wall. He then found that the skirting board had been cut so as to allow a small person to creep through. The couch had been moved slightly when the room was darkened, and the medium's confederate came from behind the skirting and appeared as a ghost. Fraud after fraud of this sort is exposed by Mr Marriott in a remarkable paper published in the March number of Pearson's Magazine. —How the Himalayas Feed the Desert.—

Some of the most curious phenomena of the world are the underground water supplies existing beneath deserts, says the Times of India. In the Rajputana deserts water is held in vast quantities in sandstone beds under the scorched surface, and is draw up from wells sunk into the strata. Bikaner raises its walls in the midst of a weary, almost rainless waste of sand, and depends on these hidden cisterns for its very existence. Whence it comes, where is the outfall, and what quantity .runs under the baked sand remain a mystery. In one well in Bikaner it has been ascertained that the water supply is equal to 20,000 gallons an hour, which is held to point to the conclusion that there is an enormous subterranean flow, and that the snow-fed rivers of the Himalaya must be the source. People in Bikaner say that pieces of wood dropped into one well have come up in another. The idea of an underground river opens up a wide range of possibilities to the imagination, and we shall look with interest for further investigations. —Cause of Grey Hair.—• Dr Guelpa, a noted French specialist, is responsible for the latest addition to the harmless remedies against white hair. Dr Guelpa's theory in connection with the colour of hair is that the habit of frequent washing is responsible for white hair. He does not go so far as to recommend total abstinence from washing, but is very distinct in his advocacy of less washing, and it must be owned that some of the reasons he puts forward for the faith that is in him sound plausible. With men, he points out, the beard turns white far sooner than the hair; "the beard is 20 years younger than the hair on his head, but it is more frequently washed and soaped." Again, "the hair first turns white at the temples and round the forehead. Why? Because everybody washes and bathes the face, while only a few persons wash the whole head every day." The hair round the face naturally receives some of the soap and water intended for the face, and loses its colour. If women's hair, in general, turns white later than men's it is because they plunge their heads into water less freouently than men. The same observations hold good where animals are concerned; a cnt's or dog's hair first turns white round the nose and about the paws, which it habitually licks or "washes." —A RusaiiUi Philanthropist.— A St. Petersburg millionaire, dying unmarried, confessed in his will that he loved nil women, and especially these who had to work for their living. Apparently, however, it was the beauties who touched his sympathy. "What is the reason that so many beautiful women never get a husband? Solely that the young men of the present day have no self-respect. They do not look for beauty but for money, when they seek a wife." So the millionaire bequeathed his entire fortune to provide poor engaged couples with the means of getting married and setting up in a comfortable home. He appears to have had the heartof a trae philanthropist, coupled with a brain such as philanthropists sadly too often possess. For the scheme collides hopelessly with the testator's wisdom. He i\jsented the lack of self-respect in young men who marry for money; so he makes beautiful women rich in order that male avarice may be induced. Ha

pities the lot of unmarried women ; so he provides them with a golden bait to catch husbands whom he himself considered devoid of self-respect. And all the time there was a clear way out of the difficulty. The girls should have been endowed so long as they kept single; marriage should have freed them from everything that could have injured their partners' self-respect. It is so hard to protect beauty, so hopeless to gild without glitter., —Long-lived Birds.— An instance was recorded in a. German paper recently of the shooting of a crow Avith a ring on its leg bearing a date of over a hundred years ago. In the same week a resident in one of the English counties wrote to the ornithological press putting on record the coming-of-age of his skylark. That letter brought to light the fact that if 21 years is not exactly a common age for a lark, it is by no means a unique one. The ring on the German crow Avas no authentic chronicler of age, as there is no saying how or when it was placed there, but the writer has owned canaries that exceeded the 21 years of the skylark, and one bullfinch he possessed reached the age of 16 years. It is possible, too, that it would have lived longer but for being overfed one winter, and succumbing to fatty degeneration. He has had a blackbird live 10 years, a chaffinch eight, a linet 11, and another bullfinch nine, while six and seven years have been usual ages for his house and aviary-kept birds. Exhibition or "fancy" bred birds, on the other hand, are comparatively short lived, and the variety known as the "Scotch Fancy," the canary with the half moon shaped body, is decrepit when two or three years old, and is becoming extinct. —A Curious Will.— The Countess Anna Maria Helena de Noailles, a member of one of the historic families of France, has made a curious will which has just been proved. She left her estate at Meads, Eastbourne, to found St. Mary's Orphanage, laying down the following rules for the education of the girls : ' No competitive examinations. No study before breakfast. No study after 6 p.m. All lessons to be learned in the morning. « No girl to work more than four and a half hour, daily. No arithmetic, except the multiplication tables, for children under ten (vide Herbert Spencer). No child with curvature of the spine to write more than five minutes a day until 13. Each girl must be certified by two phrenologists as not deficient in conscientiousness and firmness. No child to be vaccinated. Religious teaching to be equally far removed from Calvinism and ritualism. —Lord Avebury's Wonderful Years. — Lord Avebury, writing for the New York Times the other day, remarked: "Though not 80, I am older than any railway company in the world, any gas company, any steamboat company, any telegraph, telephone, or electric light company." "One need only ponder these words" (says the World's Work), "and pondering is required before it is possible to realise that they can be true, to get a sense of the world of yesterday. No electric light, no telephone—any man of 40 can remember that Ire lived in that world, but nobody can quite remember what it was like. Fifty years ago all Africa, except its coast, was a blank on the map; Asia was a dwelling-place of . mystery; Japan was unborn; United Italy had no existence, and the German Empire was still a dream. Transportation was primitive ; business was done on the basis of the country store; the feats of modern engineering were unattempted ; electricity was an interesting toy; machinery had only begun its revolutionising services:." —Unreasoning Jealousy.— Jealousy is one of the strangest forms of human unreasonableness, because in nine cases out of ten there is no cause for the fierce passions which it arouses. Take the case of Luigi Lorenzetti, a baker, who has just landed himself in prison for the second time for threatening the life of his consort. His wife had never aspired to a prize at a beauty show, yet Lorenzetti has always been furiously jealous of her because of her ugliness. On one occasion he gave her such a severe cudgelling that she narrowly escaped with her life, and while' she was recovering from her wounds in hospital Luigi spent five months in gaol. When he came out again he was more jealous of her than ever. She bad gone to live with her mother. Loremetti tried to induce her to live with him again, but he went the wrong way to work. "You are an ugly brute," he said, "and one of these fine days I'll kill you." Naturally the poor woman was afraid to put her head outside her mother's door. The police were informed of the threats uttered by the . jealous baker, and an evening or two afterwards they found him in hidmg close to his mother-in-law's abode. He was invited to explain his suspicious conduct, and on being searched was found to have a loaded revolver in his pocket. He was accordingly arrested, and when asked what he was doing outside th* house, he rewlied : "I i" J Glided to avenge my honour." "Your honour?" said the police inspector. "Why?" "Because," he replied, "my wife is an ugly brute."