When an expedition is sent out for the purpose of exploring new and unknown regions, it is often necessary to send forward scouts to obtain some general ideas concerning the nature of the country, its conformation, water-courses, inhabitants, and food supplies. The scouts return and report what they have discovered; their reports are listened to with interest, and upon these reports often depend the movements and success of the whole expedition. It will easily be seen how important it is that the scouts should be intelligent, sharp-witted, courageous and truthful; and it will also be evident that the report of these scouts concerning the new and unknown country is much more valuable than the preconceived opinions of geographers and philosophers, no matter how eminent they may be, who have simply stayed at home, enjoyed their easy-chair, and declared off-hand that the new country was useless and uninhabitable. The outlying fields of psychology, which are now the subject of psychical research, are comparatively a new and unexplored region, and until within a few years it has been considered a barren and unproductive one, into which it was silly, disreputable, and even dangerous to enter; the region was infested with dream-mongers, spiritualists, clairvoyants, mesmerists, and cranks, and the more vigorously it was shunned the safer would he be who had a reputation of any kind to lose. Such substantially was the condition of public sentiment, and especially of sentiment in strictly scientific circles, fourteen years ago, when the English Society for Psychical Research came into being. The first movement in the direction of systematic study and exploration in this new field was a preliminary meeting called by Prof. W. F. Barrett, Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a few other gentlemen on Jan. 6, 1882, when the formation of such a society was proposed; and in the following month the society was definitely organized and officers were chosen. The first general meeting for business and listening to reports took place July 17th of the same year. The persons associated in this society were of the most staid and respectable character, noted for solid sense, and a sufficient number of them for practical work were also trained in scientific methods, and were already eminent in special departments of science. Prof. Henry Sidgwick, Trinity College, Cambridge, was President; Prof. W. F. Barrett, F. R. S. E., Royal College of Science, Dublin, and Prof. Balfour Stewart, F. R. S., Owens College, Manchester, were Vice-Presidents, and among the members were a large number of well-known names of Fellows of various learned and royal societies, professional men, and members of Parliament, altogether giving character to the society, as well as assuring sensible methods in its work. Among the subjects first taken up for examination and, so far as possible, for experimental study, were the following:--