Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/47

 Rh by what has appeared already—commands unqualified praise. Nor with interest less keen do many among us await the issue of the new volume in the Bibliotheque de Carabas, in which Mr. Jacob's erudition will apply itself to unravelling the strange story of the canonization of Gautama the Buddha as a saint of the Church of Rome: a story whose migrations across Asia Minor you will remember Mr. Conybeare tracked in the paper on "Barlaam and Josaphat," which was read by him at our November meeting.

Passing to other matters, I had regarded the discussion raised by Mr. Andrew Lang in his "Protest" against some remarks of mine on the Society for Psychical Research as closed. But one can hardly keep silence in view of the subsequent circumstances which have justified those remarks. Eusapia Paladino, who, according to Mr. Stead, "has been the unexpected instrument of driving conviction as to the reality of psychical manifestations by the invisible into the minds of many scientists," has been detected as a vulgar trickster. We cannot accuse Mr. Stead of being, in Yankee slang, "too previous," for I quote from Borderland of October last, whereas the exposure of Eusapia happened in August. You may remember that prominent members of the Society for Psychical Research were greatly exercised by the unqualified testimony of certain distinguished savants as to the genuineness of the woman's performances in Professor Richet's cottage on the Ile Roubant in the autumn of 1893. In his report to that Society, published in its Journal of November, 1894, Professor Oliver Lodge described how, while satisfied as to the efficacy of the precautions taken to secure the hands and feet of the woman, he was punched and pinched about the head and body; saw, so far as the dim light allowed, curtains move without being pulled; and heard accordions played when nobody touched them. In the Society's Journal of March last, Mr. Myers remarks