819 A. In the following case the hypothesis of a subliminal hyperaesthetic discernment of the bifid fern by ordinary eyesight is possibly applicable. The account is a translation of that given in the Annates des Sciences Psychiques (May-June, 1895), by M. Adrien Gueb-hard, Professeur agrege a la Faculte de Medecine.

On the 30th May 1893, I was on a geological excursion in the environs of Nice. After a very uneasy night, passed in the village of Contes, I set out in a rather bad humour in the direction of Escarene by an old road, where my disgust was heightened by seeing on my right a long mound of absolutely no interest, either palaeontological or stratigraphical. In vain I tried to console myself by seeking in the crevices of the moist, dripping stone, or under the tufts of green maidenhair, some rare snail-shell for a collection belonging to my friends. I had already resigned myself to the uninteresting walk of the ordinary tourist, when suddenly a flash of recollection arrested my wandering attention - a memory dating from my old passion of long ago for botany, revived for a short time in 1889 by the publication of a work on the abnormal partitions of ferns, but certainly long since abandoned. Promptly, and with all the intensity of an old longing never satisfied, I conceived a great ambition for an object which, having been vainly sought, had almost passed into a myth, namely, the Asplenium Trichomanes, or Common Maidenhair Spleenwort abnormally bifurcated, which I had often seen mentioned in a book, but which I had never once, during thirty years, been able to discover, in spite of the great abundance of the normal species.

Hardly was this mental picture evoked, before my eyes, as if drawn by the real image, were arrested by one amongst all the green tufts which surrounded me, and amongst all the fronds which composed it, - by one alone, which, two yards off, had the exact appearance of a bifurcation.

Purely appearance, I said to myself, drawing near. Simply the juxtaposition of two neighbouring fronds, which I have so often mistaken for it.

Sceptical even while gathering it, I could not believe my eyes. But the evidence was undeniable, and when, much astonished but highly delighted, I had plucked the fern, I said to myself half-aloud, as though uttering a challenge, "Well, I only want now to find the Cet-." I had not finished my sentence when my gaze, leaving the high wall on the right where it was still mechanically searching, fell below the footpath on the left, at the foot of the buttress, on a poor sickly plant of Ceterach Officinarum (Common Scale-Fern or Scaly Spleenwort) crowded into the midst of the Asplenium (Spleenworts) as if dejected at finding itself in this damp shady corner instead of a crevice in a dry and sunny wall, which is the usual abode of this species.

And this plant, which ordinarily I should never have dreamed of seeking in such a spot, this fern of quite simple venation, edges very slightly divided, and under surfaces all scaly, in fact with an appearance so opposed to the idea of partition that (never having come across a specimen either in my youthful researches, in the splendid collections of the Museum, or in any herbal or rare book) I had concluded it to be non-existent - an impossible anomaly - it was, I say, a frond of this fern that appeared before me to-day at my bidding, as in Perrault's stories, as clearly bipartite as the Asplenium close by had been.

Being at once led on, and covetously pushing my reasoning straight to the principal conclusion of my old observations on the somewhat epidemic and at the same time local character of these freaks of nature, I argued: "If I have found one, and even two bifurcated fronds, certainly the third is not far to seek." And in less time than it had taken to announce this decision, without any hesitation, amongst all the attractive groups of fern, I distinguished immediately one frond of maidenhair showing two clearly-marked points.

I should never have made up my mind to put this incident in writing, at the risk of occasioning the reader's sceptical smile, if the recurrence of the same adventure twice in the course of this same year had not confirmed the reality and demonstrated the importance of the psychological problem.

On the 8th August 1893, at Lausanne (Switzerland) I had just accompanied some friends returning to the country, whose gay conversation was anything rather than botanical, and the last good-byes were hardly said, when all at once, as I walked along the path we had taken a minute or two earlier, there shot into my head, without rhyme or reason, the idea of a divided maidenhair, and immediately I put my hand on a frond, then further on on a second, and again on another, always making my choice at once without groping in the long green mantle of the great wall. Afterwards I in vain retraced my steps to explore conscientiously, with attention, and at length, the fifty yards of pathway; there was nothing more, or I could see no more.

Ten days later I was visiting near Chambery with a gay and numerous party the celebrated country house Charmettes, still alive with memories of Jean Jacques Rousseau. As I crossed the threshold, the thanks of the caretaker still in my ears, and before my eyes the pictures of the Confessions, I instinctively felt my gaze drawn towards the little wall of the terrace, where, at the first glance amongst several stunted tufts, which were afterwards to furnish me with several similar specimens, I discovered an extremely curious plant of maidenhair, such as I did not yet possess, with fronds not merely bifurcated, but really ramified.

Was it this time a reminiscence of "Lettres sur la botanique" which had given the suggestion? Was it not, as well as the time before, simply an echo at a relatively shorter distance of the exciting experience in the month of May? I do not think so, for with regard to the latter nothing of the sort could be argued, and it seems, on the contrary, that it was precisely the absence of all appreciable cause, the apparently complete spontaneity of the first vision, to which was due the intensity of the second - a real second sight which leads infallibly straight to the mark. That mark is evidently pre-existent, of a real kind, and perhaps - one might defend this view! - is itself by its simple presence, and by a sort of self-discharge at a distance, the unsuspected and unperceived cause of the sudden internal revival of a similar image, stored-up long ago; - the spontaneous exteriorisation of which, and the placing of it in coincidence with the corresponding object, would constitute precisely the fact of the discovery - that is to say, simply the proof of the existence - of that object.

Whatever may be the cause, it seems certain that only the abruptness, the suddenness of the cerebral awakening is capable of giving momentarily to the sensorial faculties that acuteness in some sort prophetic, which automatically attracts the material object of the mental evocation, not out of nothing, as a superstitious mind might believe, but simply out of the relative obscurity in which it would have remained under other circumstances.

No normal tension of the mind, no effort of will, no abilities exercised at their best could attain to the results of these rapid moments of temporary hyper-stimulation. Never, except on the three occasions I have recorded, have I been able to find the abnormal Asplenium, still less the abnormal Ceterach, although every year, sooner or later, thousands of specimens have passed before my eyes, amongst which I have often tried on solitary walks in the most varied localities, with all the concentration of attention of which I am capable, and the fullest use of a faculty of discovery developed by old naturalistic habit, to discover the rare object, the eternal ambition of the collector. I often found other things, but never that. . . .

Adrien Guebhard.

[In answer to the following question by the Editor of the Annales,] As to the fact of finding three [abnormal ferns] in a small space, is it possible that this monstrosity may be determined by certain local causes in such a manner that in a very limited area many may occur, whilst for several hundreds of yards not one may be met with? [Professor Guebhard replied:]

I can reply at once "Yes," for such was exactly the conclusion I came to on my first study of this subject, confirmed by my last find at Contes-les-Pins.

These abnormal growths are almost always in little groups, forming well-defined islands, as it were, in the midst of normal plants, proving the external, local, and non-individual character of the original causal lesion, which might be due, as I think, to some micro-organism, either vegetable or animal, a parasite fungoid or gnawing insect. . . .