[Footnote 51: There were nine sittings in all, but the records of one were imperfectly kept, and have not been preserved. In two cases the details given are insufficient; in the notes of the first evening it is stated that the person seated at the table "failed three or four times, succeeded once in giving word of (_i.e._, selected from) newspaper (which agent) held in his hand." These trials have been omitted altogether from the results given in the text. On the third evening there is a record, "gave S H but got wrong afterwards." The word thought of was _Sherry_. I have counted this trial as two successes and two failures, judging from the other experiments recorded that not more than four consecutive letters at most would have been attempted.] [Footnote 52: In this case it will be observed the table tilted only once for each letter. The method adopted (after trial of the alternative) in my own experiments, though slower and more cumbrous, was apparently productive of more accurate results. It will be readily understood that it might be easier for the transmitted impulse to check a movement, at once uncertain and spasmodic, which had been already initiated, than to overcome, in a short space of time, the resistance of inertia and generate a new movement. The distinction may perhaps be illustrated by the difference between the amount of force required to start a railway truck at rest on the level, and that which would suffice to arrest one actually in gentle motion.] [Footnote 53: Of course substitutions of this kind considerably reduce the value of the results obtained, but it will be found that when full deduction has been made on this score, the coincidences remain overwhelmingly in excess of anything which could have been produced by chance.] [Footnote 54: In some previous experiments a circular alphabet had been used, with a view of preventing any of those seated at the first table from learning by the movements of the operator's hand what point of the alphabet he had reached. The other precautions described seemed, however, as M. Richet points out, sufficient to exclude all considerations of this kind.] [Footnote 55: _Rev. Phil._, Dec. 1884; see also _S.P.R._, vol. ii. pp. 247 _et seq._] [Footnote 56: It happened on another occasion under these conditions that the right little finger was slightly affected when the left little finger, which had been selected, was so in a more decided manner.] CHAPTER V. EXPERIMENTAL PRODUCTION OF TELEPATHIC EFFECTS AT A DISTANCE.