government, and the king, William II., ordered that no pains should be spared to clear up the matter. But no explanation was ever obtained; only the fact was ascertained that similar phenomena had been repeatedly observed in other parts of the island also, and were considered quite ordinary occurrences by the natives. Certain families, it may be added, claim to have inherited from their ancestors the power to make themselves invisible, a gift which is almost invariably accompanied by the Gundarua; as these native families gradually die out, the symptoms of the latter also disappear more and more. There is no doubt that here, as in the Russian _poganne_ (cursed places which are haunted by ghosts), the belief in such appearances, bequeathed through long ages from father to son, has finally obtained a force which renders it equal to reality itself. Reason is not only biased, but actually held bound; the mind is wrought up to a state of excitement in which it ceases to see clearly, and finally visions assume an overwhelming force, which ends in symptoms of what is called magic. The same law applies, for instance, to the ancient home of charmers and magicians, the land of the Nile, where also the studies of the ancient Magi have been assumed by a succession of learned men, till they were taken up by fanatic Mohammedans, whose creed arranges invisible beings, angels, demons, and others, in regular order, and assigns them a home in distinct parts of the universe. It is not without interest to observe that even Europeans, after a long residence in the Orient, become deeply imbued with such notions, and men like Bayle St. John, in his account of magic performances which he witnessed, do not seem able to remain altogether impartial.