ately there was a discernable change in his countenance, with
as much fear and trembling as any woman I saw there, who cried out:
"O all ye that do not see, say nothing; for I perswade you it is
matter of fact, and discernable to all that is not stone-blind".'
Those who did see minutely described 'what handles the swords had,
whether small or three-barred, or Highland guards, and the closing
knots of the bonnets, black or blue. . . . I have been at a loss
ever since what to make of this last,' says Patrick Walker, and who
is not at a loss? The contagion of the hallucination, so to speak,
did not affect him, fanatic as he was, and did affect a cursing and
swearing cavalier, whose prejudices, whose 'dominant idea,' were all
on the other side. The Psychical Society has published an account
of a similar collective hallucination of crowds of people,
'appearing and disappearing,' shared by two young ladies and their
maid, on a walk home from church. But this occurred in a fog, and
no one was present who was not hallucinated. Patrick Walker's
account is triumphantly honest, and is, perhaps, as odd a piece of
psychology as any on record, thanks to his escape from the prevalent
illusion, which, no doubt, he would gladly have shared. Wodrow, it
should be said, in his History of the Sufferings of the Kirk,
mentions visions of bonnets, which, he thinks, indicated a future
muster of militia! But he gives the date as 1684.

SCRYING OR CRYSTAL-GAZING

Revival of crystal-gazing. Antiquity of the practice. Its general
harmlessness. Superstitious explanations. Crystal-gazing and
'illusions hypnagogiques'. Visualisers. Poetic vision. Ancient
and savage practices analogous to crystal-gazing. New Zealand.
North America. Egypt. Sir Walter's interest in the subject. Mr.
Kinglake. Greek examples. Dr. Dee. Miss X. Another modern
instance. Successes and failures. Revival of lost memories.
Possible thought-transference. Inferences from antiquity and
diffusion of practice. Based on actual experience. Anecdotes of
Dr. Gregory. Children as visionaries. Not to be encouraged.

The practice of 'scrying,' 'peeping,' or 'crystal-gazing,' has been
revived in recent years, and is, perhaps, the only 'occult'
diversion which may be free from psychological or physical risk, and
which it is easy not to mix with superstition. The antiquity and
world-wide diffusion of scrying, in one form or other, interests the
studen