Several other quotations might be adduced (vid. Brand's _Antiq._, vol. ii. pp. 203, 204. from which much of the above has been derived) to show that "one short peal" was ordered only to be rung after the Reformation: the custom of signifying the sex of the deceased by a certain number of knells must be a relic, therefore, of very ancient usage, and unauthorised by the Church. R. W. ELLIOT. Clifton. [Footnote 6: This custom of three tolls for a man, and two for a woman, is thus explained in an ancient Homily on Trinity Sunday:--"At the deth of a manne, three bells should be ronge as his knyll in worship of the Trinitie. And for a woman, who was the second person of the Trinitie, two bells should be ronge."] * * * * * WHO FIRST THOUGHT OF TABLE-TURNING? (Vol. viii., p. 57.) Respecting the origin of this curious phenomenon in America, I am not able to give your correspondent, J. G. T. of Hagley, any information; but it may interest him and others among the readers of "N. & Q." to have some account of what appears to be the first recorded experiment, made in Europe, of table-moving. These experiments are related in the supplement (now lying before me) to the _Allgemeine Zeitung_ of April 4, by Dr. K. Andree, who writes from Bremen on the subject. His letter is dated March 30, and begins by stating that the whole town had been for eight days preceding in a state of most peculiar excitement, owing to a phenomenon which entirely absorbed the attention of all, and about which no one had ever thought before the arrival of the American steam-ship "Washington" from New York. Dr. Andree proceeds to relate that the information respecting table-moving was communicated in a letter, brought through that ship, from a native of Bremen, residing in New York, to his sister, who was living in Bremen, and who, in her correspondence with her brother, had been rallying him about the American spirit-rappings, and other Yankee humbug, as she styled it, so rampant in the United States. Her brother instanced this table-moving, performed in America, as no delusion, but as a fact, which might be verified by any one; and then gave some directions for making the experiment, which was forthwith attempted at the lady's house in Bremen, and with perfect success, in the presence of a large company. In a few days the marvellous feat, the accounts of which flew like wildfire all over the country, was executed by hundreds of experimenters in Bremen. The subject was one precisely adapted to excite the attention and curiosity of the imaginative and wonder-loving Germans; and, accordingly, in a few days after, a notice of the strange phenomenon appeared in _The Times_, in a letter from Vienna, and, through the medium of the leading journal, the facts and experiments became rapidly diffused over the world, and have been repeated and commented upon ten thousand fold. As the experiment and its