SPIRIT WRITING.--Our handsome young friend, Dr. D. J. Stansbury, a graduate of the Eclectic Medical College of New York, is giving astonishing demonstrations on the Pacific coast. When a pair of closed slates is brought, he barely touches them, and the spirit writing begins. Sometimes the slates are held on the head or shoulders of the visitor. At one of his seances at Oakland, it is said that he held the slates for thirty-five persons within two hours, and obtained for each a slate full of writing in answers to questions placed between the slates. At a public seance in Santa Cruz, following a lecture, folded ballots were sent up by the audience and the answers were sometimes written on closed slates and sometimes by the doctor's hands. Dr. S. has also succeeded in repeating the famous performance of Charles Foster--the names of spirits appearing on his arm in blood-red letters. PROGRESS OF THE MARVELLOUS.--The _Boston Herald_ of Aug. 7 has a long account of the marvellous fires which occur in the house at Woodstock, New Brunswick, of Mr. Reginald C. Hoyt. The people of the town are greatly excited about it, and great crowds gather to witness it, but no one can explain it. The fires break out with no possible cause in the clothes, the carpet, the curtains, bed quilts, or other objects, as much as forty times in a day. The family are greatly worried and alarmed, and have been driven out of the house. The _Herald_ reporter went to examine, but found it an entire mystery. A similar outbreak of fires has been reported in Pennsylvania, at the house of Thomas McKee, a farmer at Turtle Creek. For some weeks the invisible powers have been throwing things about in a topsy turvey way. Since that, flames break out suddenly in the presence of the family, and round holes are burned in the bed-clothes, towels, hats, dresses, and even packages of groceries in the pantry. PRACTICAL UTILITY OF ANTHROPOLOGY. (_Continued from page 32._) There is no great reform, no elevation of humanity without understanding MAN,--the laws of his culture, the possibilities within his reach, the extent of the short-comings which exist to-day, the very numerous agencies of brain-building and soul-culture, the wiser methods of the school, the magnetic influences which are sometimes all potent, the dietary, the exercises of body and voice, the power of music and disciplined example, the lofty outreachings for a higher life to which we are introduced by psychometry, the supernal and divine influences which may be brought to bear, and many nameless things which help to make the aggregate omnipotent over young life, but which, alas, are unknown in colleges to-day, and will continue unknown until Anthropology shall have taken its place as the guide of humanity. * * * * *