624 A. The following is an account (taken from Proceedings S.P.R., vol. viii. p. 459) of experiments in crystal vision made by myself with two of the hypnotic subjects of Gurney and Mrs. Sidgwick, referred to in 569 A and B and 573 A. Mr. G. A. Smith was the hypnotist.

Experiments made at Brighton, March 9, 26, 27, 28, 1891. Extract from account written out after the experiments from notes made at the time, with some comments added later.

March 9

Present, G. A. Smith and the two subjects, P. and T.

1. I began with repeating the experiment already frequently made with these and other subjects, viz., suggesting to the hypnotised P. that he would see a given picture on a card when awakened. [G. A. S. hypnotised and awoke the subjects throughout.] I told P. that on awaking he would be shown a card with a picture of a baby on it. I said the one word "baby" without detail in order to see how his mind developed the idea. He was shown a blank card and saw, not a veritable baby, but a child of six.

2. Next time I suggested a hippopotamus - an animal which P. had never seen in the flesh. On being awakened he saw on the card what he called a rhinoceros. He complained that it was rather indistinct; he was not sure whether it had horns or tusks. There is a certain interest in this as indicating that the hallucination was founded upon a mental picture suggested by my words, rather than on the words themselves. One might have supposed that, since my whole suggestion consisted of the word hippopotamus, the awakened subject, however vaguely he saw the beast, would have known that it was meant for a hippopotamus. But the picture, vague as it was, seemed to be more communicable from the hypnotic to the supraliminal self than the word which had originally generated it. A picture was what had been ordered, and a picture came.

3. I repeated this form of experiment once more, telling P. that he would see a picture of T.; which he saw clearly.

4. I next determined to try the effect of a glass of water, arranged as a speculum, in giving additional vividness to these post-hypnotic pictures. I suggested to each young man separately a different scene, and then set them to gaze into the same glass of water, behind which I placed a dark background. T. had once looked into ink: but beyond this neither of them knew anything of crystal-gazing, and they were told that they were to see an optical illusion of my invention. They naturally assumed that they would both equally see whatever there was to be seen.

I told P. (hypnotised) that the electric light on the Eastbourne Parade had gone out on the previous evening, but had been relighted in a few minutes.

I told T. (hypnotised) that at Barnum's Circus there was a race of ponies with monkeys on their backs.

P., though generally the better seer of hallucinatory pictures, began (when awakened and set before the glass of water) by saying that all was quite black.

T. said: "Look, therés something going round and round in the water!"

P.: It's your fancy; it's all dark".

T.: "No, it's horses - they're horses going round and round - they've got something small on their backs, not so big as those girls who jump through hoops. It's like a circus".

Suddenly P. looked sharply up at me as though to see what I was doing. "What have you done with the light?" he said; "you've made a great ball of light in the glass, like a round thing with a light in the middle of it." He did not see the meaning of this; but it appeared that he had begun with simply a vision of darkness, and then had seen the electric light rekindled. This was not the way in which I "had conceived my picture - I had thought of the look of the long Parade and a line of lamps going out) - but it gave the essential point.

It will be observed that in this experiment, as in that of the hippopotamus, and in most of those that follow, neither percipient recognised the full meaning of the picture seen. The undistinguished " small things " in T.'s picture were, of course, the monkeys of my story. I shall recount later on some attempts to make similar obscure details clear by magnification. Both a true and a pretended or suggested magnifying-glass should be tried with many subjects under such conditions as these.