and accumulated great wealth, on which to a large extent we are now living. We are constantly told that if we doubt our present prosperity in trade we should look to the income-tax returns. This is always supposed to be a final, triumphant, and unanswerable argument. But almost the biggest rise that ever took place in Schedule D was between the years 1889 and 1891. This included 1890. Is it contended that that was a profitable year? Moreover, it should be remembered that since the mania for turning old private businesses into limited companies there has been very strong reason for all firms, intending to make such joint-stock arrangements, showing for a period of three years before the company is brought out the largest amount of profits possible, and, when these are declared in the prospectuses, the Income Tax Commissioners will have an eye on the taxes that have been paid. It will be interesting to look at the profits—or losses of many of these industrial companies two or three years hence. Similarly with the extraordinary activity last year in the shipbuilding business, it remains to be seen how much of it is going to be really profitable. The joint-stock banks are perpetually opening fresh branches and drawing through them every pound of the savings of the people; these deposits are used in aiding the shipbuilders, the housebuilders, and every other form of industry, and so long as money can be easily borrowed, profits may appear-whether nominal or real-wages will remain high, and employment will be continuous. Any one who wishes to realise vividly how apparent prosperity may be produced by borrowing has only to consider the case of our Australian colonies up to the year 1890, and then to follow what happened from 1890 to 1897.

The Chairman of the Union Bank of London mentioned at his last meeting that for some time past America had been financing Europe,' and with this additional borrowed money, and the money that France has left in England, there has been no difficulty so far in paying high wages in every department of trade. But signs are not wanting that the United States will very soon, and probably very suddenly, astonish us with a great demand for money. In the first two months of this year, according to the New York Financial Chronicle, there had been definitely formed new industrial combinations having an authorised capital of 200,000,000l. of stock, and this in addition to another 200,000,000l. reported for the calendar year 1898; and not less than 5,000 miles of new railroad will be built during this year, at a cost of 30,000,000l. Totals of such magnitude carry their own comment, and it is unnecessary to say anything to add to their force and significance. Germany at the same time has been undertaking stupendous financial obligations. Then there are France, Russia, Japan, India, China, all at work converting floating capital into fixed capital. In fact all round we see a very great strain on credit for trading purposes, and in such times it behoves us

to look round carefully and see where we are going. are going. With an enormously increased Government expenditure in England and an enormously increased municipal expenditure, with the prospect of guaranteeing wild cat' railroad schemes from Cairo to the Cape, we shall soon be bleeding at every pore, and when the call is made on us we may find that the Bank of France is neither willing nor able again to come to the assistance of the Bank of England as in 1890. I do not wish to labour the point or to go further into details. A word is sufficient to wise men. Let me conclude by repeating the Duke of Devonshire's warning: 'There may be cause for examination, for inquiry, and perhaps for precaution;' and let us bear seriously in mind the refrain of Rudyard Kipling's Recessional,' 'Lest we forget-lest we forget.'

J. W. CROSS.

WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY AND

'BRAIN-WAVES'

THE wonderful discovery of wireless telegraphy tempts me to put forward again a theory which I ventured to publish thirty years ago, and to which Signor Marconi's new invention seems, in some ways, to lend an additional plausibility.' Its republication may be perhaps forgiven for the sake of the incidents in support of it contributed by Lord Tennyson, Mr. Browning, and Mr. Woolner, which are certainly worth preserving.

Signor Marconi has proved to the whole world that, by the use of his apparatus, messages can be passed through space, for great distances, from brain to brain in the entire absence of any known means of physical communication between two widely separated stations.

To explain, or even to express, the modus operandi of what occurs it is necessary, in the present state of science, to assume the existence of that ethereal medium' pervading space which has become for many reasons an indispensable scientific assumption, and also the existence of movements, tremors or waves of energy propagated through the ether, from the generating to the receiving station.

All that is in practice essentially requisite is, in the first place, an electric energy derived from the cells of an ordinary galvanic battery-an energy which is regulated into a code of signals under the superintendence of a human brain at a certain locality; and, in the second place, at another locality, a delicately contrived receiving apparatus which is sensitive to those signals and can repeat them to another human brain.

Now if a small electric battery can send out tremors or waves of energy which are propagated through space for thirty miles or more, and can then be caught and manifested by a sensitive mechanical receiver, why may not such a mechanism as the human brain-which is perpetually, while in action, decomposing its own material, and which is in this respect analogous to an electric battery-generate and emit tremors or waves of energy which such sensitive 'receivers '

as other human brains might catch and feel, although not conveyed to them through the usual channels of sensation? Why might not such a battery as, say, the brain of Mr. Gladstone radiate into space, when in action, quasi-magnetic waves of influence which might affect other brains brought within the magnetic field of his great personality, much as the influence of a great magnet deflects a small compass needle? Many men (some perhaps of Mr. Gladstone's own colleagues) would admit their experience of such a quasi-magnetic force in his case, a predisposing and persuasive influence quite apart from and independent of the influence of spoken words.

The idea of brain-waves as a possible explanation of the modus operandi of such and such-like influences occurred to me. about the year 1851, when watching experiments in what was then called electro-biology. I saw men whom I had known long and intimately, and upon whose complete uprightness, straightforwardness, honesty, and intelligence I could absolutely rely, brought into a dazed and half-awake state by staring at a metal disc held in their hands, and who were then subjected to the will of an utter stranger, the operator, till they became his mere victims and tools and slavishly and maniacally obeyed whatever suggestion he put into their minds. through their brains. They were as clay in the hands of the potter, and the operator's brain seemed to completely control and act as it were in lieu of their own, driving them into actions and antics utterly and hatefully foreign to their habits and ways. It was inexplicable except on the assumption that their brains were not under their own control at all, but under that of another quite external to theirs. When I came to find, as I did, that such control was sometimes exercised from a distance and without any visible or audible signal from the operator to his victim, the thought came to me which I embodied in the word Brain-waves. I discussed the theory with friends for many years, accumulating additional observations as time went on, and at length, when I came to know Lord (then Mr.) Tennyson, I talked it over with him, and asked him what he thought of my hypothesis. He said he thought there was a great deal very plausible in it; that I had at any rate made a good word in brainwaves,' and a word which would live; and he encouraged me to publish the idea, as I accordingly did in the subjoined communication to the Spectator of the 30th of January, 1869.

6

JAMES KNOWLES.

BRAIN-WAVES.-A THEORY

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE Spectator]

SIR,-A collection of authenticated ghost stories relating to contemporary persons and events would not only be curious and interest

ing, but might serve to throw light on one of the darkest fields of science, a field, indeed, hardly yet claimed by science.

The mere collocation might bring out features suggestive of a law. If to such a collection were added so many of the manifestations' of mesmerists, spiritualists, electro-biologists, and clairvoyants as have a clear residuum of fact (and after a sweeping deduction of professional contributions), the indication of a common action of force through them all might probably become still more obvious.

Such statements as the following, coming as they do within the scope of a single person's observation, may, doubtless, be taken to stand for very many similar ones.

In giving them as sample narratives, I do so with two objects, firstly, to commence in your pages, if you are willing to open them for it, a veracious and authenticated catalogue of such experiences; and secondly, to venture on a crude hypothesis by way of explanation, which, of course, will be taken merely for what it is worth, but which has appeared plausible to some. It may, perhaps, at any rate serve as a temporary thread whereon to collect illustrative or contradictory instances.

Mr. Robert Browning, of whose keen study of the subject his poem of Mr. Sludge the Medium would be alone sufficient proof, tells me that when he was in Florence, some years since, an Italian nobleman (a Count Ginnasi, of Ravenna), visiting at Florence, was brought to his house, without previous introduction, by an intimate friend. The Count professed to have great mesmeric or clairvoyant faculties, and declared, in reply to Mr. Browning's avowed scepticism, that he would undertake to convince him somehow or other of his powers. He then asked Mr. Browning whether he had anything about him then and there which he could hand to him, and which was in any way a relic or memento. This, Mr. Browning thought, was perhaps because he habitually wore no sort of trinket or ornament, not even a watchguard, and might, therefore, turn out to be a safe challenge. But it so happened that by a curious accident he was then wearing under his coat-sleeves some gold wrist-studs to his shirt, which he had quite recently taken into use,, in the absence (by mistake of a sempstress) of his ordinary wrist-buttons. He had never before worn them in Florence or elsewhere, and had found them in some old drawer where they had lain forgotten for years. One of these gold studs he took out and handed to the Count, who held it in his hand awhile, looking earnestly in Mr. Browning's face, and then said, as if much impressed, 'C'è qualche cosa che mi grida nell' orecchio, “Uccisione, uccisione!"' (There is something here which cries out in my ear, "Murder, murder!"')

And truly [says Mr. Browning] those very studs were taken from the dead body of a great-uncle of mine, who was violently killed on his estate in St. Kitt's, nearly eighty years ago. These, with a gold watch and other personal objects of value,