method: First, not a twentieth part of the care is taken in the investigation of the cases and their authentication which would be required for a case of ordinary importance in a court of justice; secondly, the use of the so-called doctrine of chances is so ludicrous as to be practically a burlesque of science. They sent to 5360 persons taken at random, asking them to state whether they had ever had a dream of the death of some person known to them, which dream was an exceptionally vivid one, and of which the distressing impression lasted an hour after arising in the morning, at any time within the twelve years 1874 to 1885 inclusive. Of these 173 answered "Yes." It would be difficult to believe, if it were not published to the world on the authority of the society, that any one should conclude that that number could furnish a basis upon which to ascertain an average to be applied to the whole population; yet they do so, and say that it is as satisfactory as the proof that a similar number of persons taken at random would afford on the average number of cases of short sight or color-blindness.
Short sight and color-blindness are physical conditions, depending upon physical causes; dreams are evanescent, irregular, depending upon phenomenal causes; and the dream-images of a single family in a single week may amount to hundreds of thousands, of which any one under the operations of laws not subject to statistics may be vividly remembered.
But of the whole number of 173 who had vivid dreams of death, there were only 24 where the event fell within 12 hours of the dream. By an application of the law of chance they endeavor to maintain that there would not be more than one such coincidence in that time, and that therefore "twenty-four is twenty-four times larger than the doctrine of chance would
