To one point in this research the notice of students in folklore may be specially directed. In the attempt to account for the diffusion of popular tales, such as Cinderella, we are told to observe that the countries most closely adjacent to each other have the most closely similar variants of the story. This is true, as a rule, but it is also true that, while Scandinavian regions have a form of Cinderella with certain peculiarities not shared by Southern Europe, those crop up sporadically, far away, among Kaffirs and the Indian 'aboriginal' tribe of Santhals. The same phenomenon of diffusion occurs when we find savage mediums tied up in their trances, all over the North, among Canadian Hareskins, among Samoyed and Eskimo, while the practice ceases at a given point in Labrador, and gives place to Medicine Lodges. The binding then reappears if not in Australia, certainly in the ancient Greek ceremonial. The writer is not acquainted with 'the bound and bounding young man' in the intervening regions and it would be very interesting to find connecting cases, stepping-stones, as it were, by which the rite passed from the Levant to the frozen North. ANCIENT SPIRITUALISM. M. Littre on 'demoniac affections,' a subject, in his opinion, worthy of closer study. Outbreak of Modern Spiritualism. Its relations to Greek and Egyptian Spiritualism recognised. Popular and literary sources of Modern Spiritualism. Neoplatonic thaumaturgy not among these. Porphyry and Iamblichus. The discerning of Spirits. The ancient attempts to prove 'spirit identity'. The test of 'spirit lights' in the ancient world. Perplexities of Porphyry. Dreams. The Assynt Murder. Eusebius on Ancient Spiritualism. The evidence of Texts from the Papyri. Evocations. Lights, levitation, airy music, anaesthesia of Mediums, ancient and modern. Alternative hypotheses: conjuring, 'suggestion' and collective hallucination, actual fact. Strange case of the Rev. Stainton Moses. Tabular statement showing historical continuity of alleged phenomena. In the Revue des Deux Mondes, for 1856, tome i., M. Littre published an article on table-turning and 'rapping spirits'. M. Littre was a savant whom nobody accused of superstition, and France possessed no clearer intellect. Yet his attitude towards the popular marvels of the day, an attitude at once singular and natural, shows how easily the greatest minds can pay themselves with words. A curious reader, in that period of excitement about 'spiritualism,' would turn to the Revue, attracted by M. Littre's name. He would ask: 'Does M. Littre accept the alleged facts; if so, how does he explain them?' And he would find that this guide of human thought did not, at least, _reject_ the facts; that he did not (as he well might have done) offer imposture as the general explanation; that he regarded the topic as very obscure, and eminently worthy of study,--and that he pooh-poohed the whole affair!