[Footnote 79: Second-hand narratives have, however, a value of their own, as shown later; for by taking note of the features which occur commonly in such cases, but are absent from the best attested first-hand narratives, we obtain a valuable standard of comparison by which to check aberrations of memory.] [Footnote 80: An apparent exception to this statement will be found in Nos. 45 and 46, Chapter VII., and elsewhere, where the account is furnished not by the actual percipient, but by a person to whom the percipient related his experience before he knew of its correspondence with fact. The evidence in such cases, it should be pointed out, is as good as first-hand; indeed, where, as in Nos. 45 and 46, the actual percipient was illiterate and the narrator educated, it may be regarded as better than first-hand.] [Footnote 81: This part of the work has been undertaken in this country by Professor and Mrs. Sidgwick, Mr. E. Gurney, Mr. F. W. H. Myers, myself, and others; in America, chiefly by Professor Royce and Dr. Hodgson.] [Footnote 82: In the _Times_ of the 6th January 1893 there appeared a letter from a well-known writer, narrating how in 1851 he had received a description of the sea-serpent from a lady who had watched its movements for some half-hour in a small bay on the coast of Sutherlandshire. So far the story is on a par with any of our own second-hand ghost stories. But the writer goes on to say that the serpent had rubbed off some of its scales on the rocks; that a few of these scales, of the size and shape of scallop-shells, were for some years in his own possession, but that when he searched amongst his curios, in order to show these scales to Professor Owen, they were not to be found. The humble investigators of the S.P.R. have occasionally found themselves in the same position as the illustrious anatomist.] [Footnote 83: See, for example, the case quoted in Chapter X., No. 63.] [Footnote 84: _Phantasms of the Living_, vol. i. pp. 164-166.] [Footnote 85: _Proceedings American S.P.R._, pp. 350, 351.] CHAPTER VII. TRANSFERENCE OF IDEAS AND EMOTIONS.