It was Professor Barrett, of the Royal College of Science, Dublin, who, in a paper read before the British Association at Glasgow in 1876, first isolated the phenomenon from its somewhat dubious surroundings, and drew public attention to its importance. Up to that time "community of sensation" or thought-transference seems to have been known only as a rare and fitful accompaniment of the hypnotic trance. But in the course of the correspondence arising out of his paper Professor Barrett learnt of several instances where similar phenomena had been observed in the waking state. The Willing game was just then coming into fashion, and cases had been observed in which the thing willed had been performed without contact between the performer and the person willing, and apparently without the possibility of any normal means of communication between them. Later, in the years 1881-82, a long series of experiments, in which Professor Sidgwick, the late Professor Balfour Stewart, the late Edmund Gurney, Mr. F. W. H. Myers and others joined with Professor Barrett, seemed to establish the possibility of a new mode of communication. And these earlier results have been confirmed by further experiments continued down to the present time by many observers both in this country and abroad. In the present chapter some account will be given of experiments in the transference of simple ideas and sensations performed with percipients in the ordinary waking state. The next chapter will deal with similar results obtained with hypnotised persons. In Chapters IV. and V. results of a more complicated or unusual character will be described and discussed. _Transference of Tastes._