Scientists and Science Writers Keep Shoveling False Narratives About Life in Space and Life's Origin

More baloney has been written on the topics of life in outer space and the origin of life than almost any other topic. The baloney keeps getting shoveled at a breathtaking pace. For evidence of this, you need merely look at the recent stores reported in so-called "Science News" feeds. 

One example is a recent story at livescience.com entitled " 'This might be the seeds of life': Organic matter found on asteroid Ryugu could explain where life on Earth came from." The story is rubbish for several reasons:

(1) Scientists do not believe that life ever existed on the asteroid  Ryugu or on any other asteroid. 

(2) There is no scientific concept of any such thing as a "seed of life," in the sense of something causing life to arise from non-life. 

(3) The term "organic matter" merely refers to any matter containing carbon. Even the simplest life requires a vast level of organization and a vast level of functional information. You no more get such a thing from mere matter containing carbon than you get a jet aircraft from assorted scraps of metal gathered from a junkyard. 

We hear this nonsensical quote in the Livescience.com article, one coming from the co-author of a paper that fails to report the finding of any interesting subunits of living things: "' This organic matter might be the small seeds of life once delivered from space to Earth' team member and Tohoku University Graduate School of Science assistant professor Megumi Matsumoto said in a statement."  The scientist is talking about the paper here, which has nothing the least bit impressive to report. The paper does not report finding even a single amino acid in the asteroid it studied.  

The subunits of one-celled life are organelles. The subunits of such organelles are protein complexes. The subunits of such protein complexes are protein molecules, consisting typically of hundreds of amino acids. The subunits of protein molecules are amino acids. None of these things was found in the paper reported. So for one of its authors to be boasting about finding "small seeds of life" is hogwash. I may wonder: do today's scientists attend seminars in which they are coached in how to use trick language to make it sound like they found something important when they found nothing important?

Also recently in the science news was a bogus news headline claiming that scientists are convinced that life has already been discovered on Mars. We are given a phony news story claiming that the Perseverance rover on Mars has found some sign of life. No such sign was found. Perseverance has not even found a single amino acid on Mars.  The story mentions something about some water possibly being found underground, but water does not equal life. The article links to only one scientific paper, one entitled "Ground penetrating radar observations of the contact between the western delta and the crater floor of Jezero crater, Mars." That paper uses the term "life" exactly zero times, and makes no use of the word "biological."

Late in 2023 we began seeing headlines such as this one: "JAMES WEBB SPOTS POSSIBLE SIGNS OF LIFE ON DISTANT PLANET -- THIS COULD BE A BIG DEAL." The claim was made in many a science news story that dimethyl sulfide had been detected on planet K2-18 b.  The claim was not a strong one, because the relevant science paper did not flatly claim that dimethyl sulfide had been detected. It merely claimed "potential signs of dimethyl sulfide." Moreover, the paper detected a "show stopper" in regard to life: it failed to detect any sign of water. 

It is generally agreed that water is absolutely necessary for any form of life of life to exist. The non-detection of water at K2-18 b is a reason for thinking that life does not exist there.  But did the press stories pick up on the failure to find water? No, and one of them reported the exact opposite of what was found in regard to water.  The story on www.yahoo.com very much misinformed us by stating this:

"The ability of a planet to support life depends on its temperature, the presence of carbon and probably liquid water. Observations from JWST seem to suggest that that K2-18b ticks all those boxes."

No, actually, what the paper reported is that water was not found at K2-18b. 

A BBC "Science Focus" story recently gave us this very false "almost finished" narrative about research  into the origin of life:

"While we don’t know exactly how life began, we have a lot of clues. Let’s start with the easiest bits: what is life made of and where did those components come from? Living organisms contain thousands of chemicals: like proteins and nucleic acids that carry our genetic information. These chemicals are complex, but we now know that their constituent parts form quite readily."

No, we do not have "a lot of clues" about life's origin. The constituent parts of proteins (amino acids) do not "form quite readily," and the evidence the article cited for such an opinion (the Miller-Urey experiment) did nothing to show that such amino acids "form quite readily," because it was not a realistic simulation of the early Earth, as I discuss here.  The article also refers us to some mere computer experiment which is irrelevant because it did not physically simulate the early Earth. From such evidence the author makes the untrue claim that " the implication is that the young Earth was a factory of biological chemicals."  No such implication can be logically drawn from the items cited, and there is no reason to believe that the early Earth was any such thing.  The idea that billions of years ago there was some "primordial soup" filled with "building blocks of life" is a false narrative not supported by any experiments realistically simulating the early Earth.  And calling things like amino acids "biological chemicals" is a piece of misleading trick language designed to blur the immense gulf between lifeless chemicals and living things. 

At the phys.org site we recently had the ridiculous headline "How did life get started on Earth? Atmospheric haze might have been the key." We hear of an experiment that does nothing to overturn my previous claim that no realistic experiments simulating the early Earth have established that there ever would have been any "primordial soup" filled with "building blocks of life."  We read a discussion of the paper here. That paper did an experiment in which a little steel chamber filled with gas was zapped with electricity for two seconds.  What's wrong with that? Well, for one, there were no small steel chambers billions of years ago. A small steel chamber is something that will exponentially exaggerate the effects of electricity jolts inside it, causing effects maybe millions of times more concentrated than you would get if the same jolt of electricity occurred in the open air. For another thing, we are told in the paper that the chamber was jolted with electricity for two seconds. We are not told how many times this jolt occurred. We vaguely hear about experiments without any listing of how many times this two-second jolt occurred. Even under the most charitable guess of the jolt occurring only once, you still have a length of time that is maybe 40,000 times longer than a natural lightning bolt, which strikes a cubic meter of space for no longer than about 50 microseconds.  What is the result of this experiment that fails to realistically simulate any early Earth conditions? The result was some amino acids in a concentration of only about 1 part per million (as shown in Figure 2). Overall, the experiment helps to show how untrue are claims that lightning bolts could have produced any primordial soup rich in "building blocks of life." But the press article treats the experiment as if it did the opposite.  

Then there was recently in the New Scientist a goofy headline of "Lightning during volcanic eruptions may have sparked life on Earth." The first two sentences state this:

"An analysis of volcanic rocks has revealed large quantities of nitrogen compounds that were almost certainly formed by volcanic lightning. This process could have provided the nitrogen required for the first life forms to evolve and thrive."

Here we have a senseless claim in which getting nitrogen compounds is confused with the origin of life, which is as silly as saying that  all you need to get an encyclopedia is to get a tree (which has the wood pulp needed for the paper).  Why do people get away with nonsense like this? It's because our biology authorities did such a very poor job of educating the public about the very high levels of organization and information in even the simplest living thing. 

Some source called Science Alert is these days giving us quite a few groundless headlines, such as its recent headline "Life Spreads Across Space on Tiny Invisible Particles, Study Suggests."  The story discusses no evidence for this claim, and the idea of life spreading around on dust grains crossing light-years of space is ridiculous. 

The same BBC Science Focus mentioned earlier has a recent article with the title "The 4 biggest questions about alien life, answered by an astrobiologist."  There is no answer to the biggest question about alien life, which is whether it exists.  One of the questions is "What three things are making astrobiologists so optimistic about finding life beyond Earth?"  There are no recent developments providing any good basis for astrobiologists being more optimistic about finding alien life.  The three answers given are:

(1) Extremophiles -- bacteria that can survive in harsh conditions do nothing to reduce the improbability of life arising from non-life.

(2) Extrasolar planets -- to argue that extrasolar planets provide a basis for optimism about extraterrestrial life is to commit the old "many chances equals some successes" fallacious argument that astrobiologists so often engage in. Given sufficiently low odds, many chances does not make it likely that there will be even one success, and given low enough odds the chance of success may still be smaller than 1 in a billion trillion quadrillion. Abiogenesis (life arising naturally from non-life) faces just such prohibitive odds, odds so low that the existence of billions of planets in our galaxy does not change them. When some organization of matter has a probability of less than 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of occurring, it does not become likely to occur if there are billions of planets where it might occur.  

(3) Robotic exploration of the solar system -- such exploration has provided no basis for optimism about extraterrestrial life, with the possible exception of a single 1976 Viking test on Mars that was negated by the failure to find relevant organic molecules in decent numbers on Mars, and the failure to find any amino acids on Mars. 

You could just as easily write an article claiming that scientists are more pessimistic than ever about discovering extraterrestrial life, and base your article on the fact that 50 years of searches for radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations have all failed, and the fact that the James Webb Space Telescope has failed to find any biosignatures despite two years of searching for them. 

Then there's a recent article at the Universe Today site with the headline "Cosmic Dust Could Have Helped Get Life Going on Earth." Comically, upon opening this article I see a large ad of "Air Filtration Dust System." Some computer algorithm has judged that since I am looking at a page about cosmic dust, that I may be interested in buying some dust filter.  We read this in the article:

"Although we’ve long known that cosmic dust accumulated on early Earth, it’s not been seen as a major source for early life because of how it accumulates. With comet and asteroid impacts, a great deal of prebiotic material is present at the site of the impact. Dust, on the other hand, is scattered across Earth’s surface rather than accumulating locally. However, the authors of this new work noted that cosmic dust can accumulate and be concentrated in sedimentary deposits, and wanted to see how that might play a role in the early appearance of terrestrial life."

It's the same old nonsense that has gone on for 150+ years: people trying to explain some vast level of organization by appealing to accumulation effects. Biological organisms are vastly organized, and even the simplest one-celled life would be an enormous level of organization. You do not accumulate your way to huge levels of organization.  You cannot explain such organization by some "stuff piles up" scenario. Accumulation of materials cannot explain the origin of the simplest life, and accumulation of random mutations cannot explain the origin of enormously organized things such as protein molecules and cells.  Inside your body are 20,000+ different types of protein molecules, each a different type of complex invention; and most of them require a very special organization of thousands of atoms, just like a functional page in a technical manual requires a very special organization of thousands of letters. 

A recent article in Nature about the origin of life is almost as bad as the articles mentioned above. We have a little candor here and there  mixed with the worst kind of vague hand waving, in which the origin of life is described like this:

"In broad brush strokes, this means that gases such as carbon dioxide (the near-universal source of carbon in cells today) and hydrogen feed a network of reactions with a topology resembling metabolism. Genes and proteins arise within this spontaneous protometabolism and promote the flux of materials through the network, leading to cell growth and reproduction." 

This is as silly as claiming that many well-written essays arise at ink factories because of splashes of the ink, given that proteins and genes require as many well-arranged atoms as the number of well-arranged letters in a well-written 500-word essay. The authors mention problems with their scenario, listing only minor things 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 times less severe than the real problems, which can be summarized as "accidents don't make complex inventions." 

An article today in the Washington Post has the untrue headline "Scientists get closer to solving chemical puzzle of the origin of life." The article discusses nothing to justify such a headline. We merely hear about some chemists creating something called pantetheine (a fragment of one type of protein), but not in any experiment realistically simulating early Earth conditions. There's also in today's science news an equally bogus headline of "Scientists reveal how first cells could have formed on Earth."  No, it's just some scientists fooling around with fatty bubbles, getting empty bubbles that aren't cells (things gigantically more organized than mere bubbles). 

Then there are all the scientists who announce with great fanfare some result they produced with ridiculously complex lab equipment and many purposeful experimenter interventions, and who claim that this tells us something about what could have happened naturally. 

Do you see the fallacy?

This kind of nonsense has been going on full-blast for more than 70 years. Research about the origin of life and the articles written about such research make up a long-stinking cesspool of misleading claims and groundless boasts.  Very rarely, you will get some honesty from scientists on this topic. In the paper "Emergence of life in an inflationary universe, scientist Tomonori Totani stated, "The expected number of abiogenesis events is much smaller than unity when we observe a star, a galaxy, or even the whole observable universe." He thereby confessed that it would be very unlikely that there would be a natural origin of life (abiogenesis) even in the entire observable universe. 

Lessons to be learned:

(1) You should tend to distrust sensational-sounding claims of astrobiologist researchers, particularly when they make such claims outside of their scientific papers.  If such researchers ever announce discovering "biosignatures" it will probably be an example of pareidolia, of someone subjectively seeing something (in blurry, borderline, limits-of-observation hard-to-analyze data) that he was eagerly hoping to find, like someone checking his toast on 1000 days, and finally announcing he found something that looked like the face of Jesus. 

(2) Don't trust science writers writing on the topic of life in outer space or the origin of life, particular anyone writing for a web site that displays ads (where misleading clickbait is now an out-of-control epidemic). 

Recent untrue headlines in the science news

Near-Death High-Speed Life Reviews From Before 1950

In accounts of near-death experiences we tend to hear the same narrative motifs repeated over and over. One very common motif is a report of the observer separating from his body.

Another common motif of near-death experiences is an account of being propelled through some mysterious tunnel, towards some mysterious light or mystical destination.

 

Another common characteristic of near-death experiences are so-called life review events in which someone may recall the events of life in very rapid succession and great vividness.  Researchers of such experiences claim that about 20% of those having near-death experiences have such a life review. At the 26:56 mark in the video below, we hear a woman recall having such an experience while being trapped underneath the water while rafting in rapids. She says this: "And then I was taken through a life review that was like nothing I personally could have imagined." We then hear another person saying this:

"One collection of phenomena are changes in your thought processes. Your thoughts seem to be going faster than usual, they're clearer than usual, they're more vivid than usual. You may have a complete review of your entire life. And this is happening again in the context of likely brain damage, or at least severely restricted oxygen to the brain, when you would not expect much of an experience at all, let alone hyper-acute senses and rapid clear thinking."

We also have at the 30:20 mark in the video a woman describing a life-review during a near-death experience. At the 32:11 mark the woman having the river accident says that in her life review, "I could experience thousands of things all at the same moment of time, but I was experiencing each of them independently."  

Claims that such life-review events occur in near-death experiences go back more than a hundred years before Raymond J. Moody's 1975 book Life After Life.  For example, on page 267 of the June 4, 1875 edition of The Spiritualist, we have a first-hand account of such an experience, told by the distinguished scholar William Stainton Moses. He states this, describing a life-review during a near-drowning during a sporting event:

"It never occurred to anybody, I suppose, that a man who could venture in a little cockleshell such as I was sculling, was unable to swim ; and so no particular effort was made to rescue me. I went down dazed and confused with the upset, and the shouts and objurgations of the crowd. I remember the shout of the coxswain, more forcible than polite, and then I floundered about until I suppose I became unconscious. At any rate a strange peacefulness took the place of my previous feeling. I recognised fully that I was drowning, but no sort of fear was present to my mind. I did not even regret the fact. By degrees, as it seemed—though the process must have been instantaneous—I recollected my life. The link was—well, I am drowning, and this life is done with. It has not been a very long one. . . . And so the events of it came before my mind, and seemed to shape themselves in outline and move before me. It was not that I thought, but that objective pictures of events seemed to float before me, a moving tableau, as though depicted on the mass of water that weighed upon my eyes. I seemed to see the tableau, but not with the eye of sense: with that mysterious inner vision with which I have since discerned spiritual things. The silky, velvety appearance of the tableau, which seemed as I say to float before me, was very prominently impressed upon me. The events were all scenes in which I had been an actor, and no very trivial or unimportant ones were depicted, though they were not all serious, some indeed laughable enough. Nor was my frame of mind particularly solemn. I was an interested spectator ; little more. One incident of which I had no previous knowledge was recalled to my mind on that occasion, and has never again left it. My memory of it is now as clear as of other things. The next thing I remember was the interruption of this peaceful state by a series of most unpleasant sensations which were attendant on resuscitation."

In the same 1875 publication on page 268 we read, "Mr. Serjeant Cox said that several persons, on being resuscitated from hanging, had spoken of the memory of their lives having passed before them at the moment of suffocation." Similarly, on page 292 of the June 18, 1875 edition of The Spiritualist we have a similar account:

"Mr. Jencken said that six years ago he was attacked by a mob in Spain, and practically speaking he died four times that night, for he swooned away and came to again four times. The whole of his life passed before him like a panorama ; he thus read off a part of his life, then became conscious again of the onslaughts of the mob. A gun was fired at him, the mob disappeared to his consciousness, and again the vision of his past life returned, taking up the thread of events where it had left off. This occurred four times, each successive reverie beginning where the other had finished." 

Similarly, on page 410 of the 1876 book The Marvellous Country by Samuel Woodworth Cozzens, we have an account of a life review during a terrifying fall that almost killed the author:

"All this time I was acquiring greater momentum, until it seemed as though I was fairly flying into the very arms of the horrible death which stood staring me so steadily in the face. Not a bush or shrub could I see growing upon the precipitous sides; there was nothing, absolutely nothing, for me to cling to, and the stones and earth which I disturbed in my descent were falling in a shower around me.

Convinced that death was inevitable, I became perfectly reconciled to the thought. My mind comprehended in a moment the acts of a life-time. Transactions of the most trivial character, circumstances the remembrance of which had been buried deep in memory’s vault for years, stood before me in bold relief; my mind recalled with the rapidity of lightning, and yet retained a distinct impression of every thought.

I seemed to be gliding swiftly and surely out of the world, but felt no fear, experienced no regret at the thought; on the contrary, rejoiced that I was so soon to see with my own eyes the great mystery concealed behind the veil; that I was to cross the deep waters and be at rest.

I thought I heard the sound of many voices, in wonderful harmony, coming from the far-off distance, though from what direction I could not tell.

My momentum had become so great that I seemed to experience much difficulty in breathing; and I remember that I was trying to explain to my own satisfaction why this should be so, when the heel of my right boot struck the corner of a small stone that chanced to be firmly imbedded in the earth and therefore offered so much resistance to my descent, that upon striking it I was thrown forward upon my face. This stone without doubt saved my life."

The book has this illustration to depict the situation:

In 1892 Albert Heim produced a paper in German entitled "Notizen über den Tod durch Absturz," which can be translated as "The Experience of Dying from Falls" or "Notes About Death from Falling."  The original German text of the paper can be read here. Below is a translation I got using Google Translate. First Heim notes how he got his accounts of people who had close brushes with death after falling:

"In mountaineering and other literature we come across relevant stories here and there, although rarely. In the Hamburg Laza-rethen in the war year 1870, as well as on various later occasions, I interviewed war wounded. Several doctors who had a lot of contact with victims were able to tell me about their statements. I researched several bricklayers and roofers who had fallen from scaffolding and roofs, half-injured workers in mines, on railway lines, etc. A large number ...who fell without losing their lives were able to give me precise information. Those who were thrown away by the air strike during the Elm landslide and became unconscious told me their experiences. I also received detailed reports from some club members who had crashed and were rescued, from three fellow professionals, etc. A fisherman who had been swept deep under water when the Zug bank collapsed told me his experiences. We have some good accounts of the Mönchenstein railway accident from those who narrowly escaped with their lives, e.g. from a locomotive driver, from some passengers, etc. etc. But what has caused me not to miss an opportunity to write such notes for more than 25 years collect, were my own experiences." 

Then Heim notes a remarkable similarity in the accounts:

"For the vast majority of those who have had an accident - probably 95% - regardless of their level of education, the symptoms are exactly the same, only experienced slightly differently in degree. In the face of death due to a sudden accident, almost everyone experiences the same mental state - a completely different state than in the face of a less sudden cause of death. It can be briefly characterized as follows:

No pain is felt, nor is there any paralyzing shock that can occur in the event of minor danger (fire outbreak, etc.). No fear, no trace of despair, no pain, rather calm seriousness, deep resignation, commanding spiritual security and speed. The activity of thought is enormous, increased to a hundredfold speed or intensity, the conditions and the eventualities of the outcome are objectively clearly seen far away, no confusion occurs. The time seems very extended. You act quickly and think carefully. In many cases this is followed by a sudden look back into one's entire past. Finally, the faller often hears beautiful music and then falls into a wonderful blue sky with little rose-colored clouds. Then consciousness disappears painlessly - usually at the moment of awakening, which is only heard and never painfully felt. Of the senses, hearing is probably the last to disappear."

Heim discusses a strange increase in the speed of thought:

"Anxiety paralysis does not occur, thought activity appears to be enormously increased, and time is lengthened in the same proportion. The judgment remains clearly objective, and as far as the external circumstances allow it, the person who falls remains able to act at lightning speed."

Heim quotes a first-hand account by one person who nearly died in a terrifying fall:

"Meanwhile, a whole flood of thoughts had time to move through the brain in a clear way: The next blow will bring you a grim death, it was said. A series of pictures showed me in quick succession all the beauty and love that I had experienced in this world, and in between them the sermon that I had heard from Mr. Obersthelfer that morning sounded like a powerful melody: God is almighty, heaven and earth rest his hand; We must remain silent about his will. Infinite calm came over me at this thought, in the midst of all the terrible turmoil. The car was thrown up twice more; then the front part suddenly drove vertically down into the Birs, and the rear part with me was thrown sideways over the embankment down into the Birs. The wagon was shattered."

Heim gives this first-hand account of a fall he experienced, noting that his thought seemed greatly speeded-up:

"Then I saw, as if on a stage from a distance, my entire past life played out in numerous images. I saw myself as the main character playing. Everything was as if transfigured of a heavenly light and everything was beautiful and without pain, without fear, without torment. The memory of very sad experiences was also clear, but still not sad. No fighting or strife, the fight had also become love. Sublime and reconciling thoughts dominated and connected the individual images, and a divine calm passed through my soul like wonderful music. More and more a wonderfully blue sky surrounded me with little rosy and especially delicate violet clouds - I floated out into it without any pain and gently, while I saw that I was now flying freely through the air and that there was still a field of snow below me. Objective observation, thinking and subjective feeling occurred simultaneously side by side. Then I heard my thud and my fall was over."

Mentions of accounts such as these occur in published literature as early as 1847. Below is a quote from page 71 of the 1847 book "The Unseen World" by John Mason Neale:

"The nearest approach that man has ever made to the invisible world is probably in those persons who, having been to all appearance drowned, have been recovered on the use of the proper means. And what is singular is this ; by all accounts, after the first short struggle is over, there is perfect consciousness, but no pain. It is said that every action of past life is borne in upon a drowning man's mind with perfect clearness ; all rush on his memory together, yet each distinctly ; and if there be any suffering, it is entirely the moral pain which may result from that retrospect ; for there is no physical anguish. On the contrary, the prevailing sensation is an indescribable calm, accompanied by a pleasant green light, they say, like green fields : the agony begins with the attempt at resuscitation. It is believed that a gentleman, who occupies a distinguished place in scientific literature, and who is said to have been longer under water than any one who has ever been brought back to life, also, in a more remarkable degree than any one else, saw something of those 'unspeakable things which it is not lawful for a man to utter.' ''

This post is one of eight posts in which I have documented accounts of near-death experiences dating from before 1975. You can read the other posts here. 

In the video at the top of this post, we have a remarkable example of what is called a veridical near-death experience. At the 22:09 mark a doctor recalls his "first day as a doctor" on a long shift at a hospital. A second-year resident promised the doctor that he would be with the doctor throughout his long shift. Soon a patient went into cardiac arrest, and the doctor was able to prevent him from dying (the second-year resident being absent). The doctor recalls talking with the patient's wife using rather gloomy language, and eating the patient's lunch (which the patient was too sick to eat). Days later the patient spoke to the doctor, and recalls floating out of his body during his cardiac arrest. The patient scolded the doctor for eating his lunch, and talking to his wife using such gloomy language. The doctor is stunned to hear the patient claim that at the time of his resuscitation from cardiac arrest, the doctor was feeling sorry for himself because the second-year resident did not stay with him as he promised. This was a rather embarrassing thought that the doctor had kept to himself, and had expressed to no one. 

We have here a good example of what is called a veridical out-of-body experience, in which a subject recalls making observations while out of his body which should have been impossible for him to make, given his medical situation at the time. See my post here for many similar cases. The video at the top of the post at the 22:00 mark has a very remarkable account of a veridical out-of-body experience, in which a doctor reports someone reading his mind during an out-of-body experience. 

Spookiest Years, Part 13: The Year 1876

In previous posts in this intermittently appearing "Spookiest Years" series on this blog (here, here, here, here, here, here, here,

here, here, here, here and here), I had looked at some very spooky events reported between 1848 and 1874. Let me pick up the thread and discuss some spooky events reported in the year 1876. 

On page 68 of the February 11, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist, we read of several remarkable cases. The author Emma Hardinge-Britten states the following about herself, using the term "the somnambulic condition" to refer to a kind of trance:

"The author, for instance, has been known to rise in her sleep, proceed in thick darkness to her study, and there inscribe musical compositions, and write abstruse exercises in harmony and composition, entirely beyond her normal capacity to achieve. On the other hand, she has frequently been known in the ' somnambulic condition ' to recite original poems, sing original compositions, and make what were pronounced to be 'splendid orations,' in a style totally different to her ordinary methods, and though at the early period of childhood when these feats of abnormal wonder were enacted, her friends and associates...attributed them all to the same somnambulic state, there were marked differences between the various phenomena exhibited, proving that some were the  action of the sleeper’s own spirit in a state of high exaltation,  whilst others must have proceeded from the influence of  foreign spiritual intelligences taking advantage of the somnambulist’s unconscious organism to manifest their presence." 

On the same page Emma tells of a sleepwalker who displayed similar behavior, writing perfectly in darkness, and having no memory of what was written.  We then hear this remarkable claim:

"Dr. A. 0. Stiles, of Bridgeport, Couu., claimed to have, from a boy, possessed the faculty of perceiving, by a clairvoyant sense, the interior conditions of the human system, and pointing out its locale. In his medical practice he used to give the most invariably correct diagnoses of the diseases of distant persons by holding a lock of their hair in his hand."

On page 246 of the May 26, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist, we have an account by William Oxley (dated May 22, 1876) of events of May 11, 1876. We hear of an astonishing transfiguration of a handkerchief into a human figure, audibly identified with a woman who died four days ago:

"There were present seven of us, including Dr. Monck, the medium. Taking our seats round an oval table, I sat at one end, a good light from a gas lamp being behind me ; Dr. Monck sat at the other end of the table. After a time he became entranced, and, rising from his seat, came up to me on the left-hand side, close to where I was sitting. Samuel  was the controlling spirit. He took a white lawn handkerchief from Dr. Monck’s pocket, and placing it on his right  hand, the handkerchief appeared to be 'absorbed,' or meta-morphosed, and in a few seconds there, at the extremity of his arm, appeared a beautiful, unmistakable feminine face,  as large as a good-sized infant’s; it was a perfect human head, with the features clearly delineated. So clearly are the features and form impressed upon my memory, that if I were  an artist I could even now produce them on canvas,  The head and face were of pure classic form, and very beautiful to look upon. While I was looking intently on the object before me I heard a whispering voice, at first very  faintly, issuing from the head; the words were, 'Do you hear me?' I replied, 'No, not distinctly,' as Samuel,  through Dr. Monck, was speaking at the same time. I then said, 'Come closer, so that I may hear you.' The reply was, ' I will try.' I now saw that the lips moved in giving articulation to the words. Dr. Monck then pressed his lips close to my right cheek, which I felt distinctly all the time  that the head was within a few inches of my left ear. Listening intently I heard the words, ' My name is Rhondda,  and I wish to write to my parents in Cardiff, and tell  them not to grieve for me, as I am very happy. I have seen in my beautiful and glorious home, and I shall often try to  come through this medium, and hope to be very useful'....From what I have learnt, the spirit of Rhondda passed out of the body on Sunday evening, May 7th, at 8 p.m., and on the fourth day between 8 and 9 p.m. (three clear days and nights intervening), she appeared to us in the manner above described."

On page 316 of the July 7, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist, we have an account of a seance involving the medium James T. Morris on May 10, 1876.  The account states that the medium (Morris) was disrobed and thoroughly examined, and then placed on the right side of a small wooden cabinet divided into two halves, with the two halves separated by wire mesh. We are told the cabinet had been thoroughly examined by the witnesses. We read of several figures mysteriously emerging from this cabinet, including (1) a tall German with blue eyes and a red mustache (unlike the medium with brown eyes and a height of five feet two inches); (2) a blue-eyed man six feet two inches in height  (unlike the medium with brown eyes and a height of five feet two inches);  (3) a bearded man three inches taller than the medium; (4) a woman. We read this of the disappearance of the woman;

"She remained about fifteen minutes, and on returning slowly to the cabinet, commenced gradually to dematerialise, so that by the time she reached the door she had diminished fully two feet in height, and correspondingly in size of form. Then she seemed to be slowly drawn by some unseen power into the cabinet, and, while standing within the door, in full view of all, gradually dematerialised to the size of a babe not more than eighteen inches in height. She reached out her little hand and arm, and waved it to and fro, then the door closed, and she was gone from our sight, to the regret of all.....The next to appear was a gentleman about five feet ten inches in height, with dark hair and long dark beard, who was recognised by a gentleman present as his father-in-law, who passed away in August last."

The account ends up like this:

"The committee again overhauled the cabinet, examined every seal and every bolt and screw, and announced to the audience that everything about the cabinet was satisfactory. The medium then offered to be searched again, but the committee said it was not necessary. The hard sceptics admitted that this seance completely puzzled them, and overturned all theories of the medium personating different characters. At the request of some, the medium stood up inside of the cabinet, when it was found that his face merely reached a little above the opening. A gentleman present then drew up a paper and read it before the company, and requested them to sign it as an endorsement of Mr. Morris as a materialising medium. It was very readily signed. The following is a copy of the statement, with the signatures:

— Marion County, Indianapolis, Ind., May 10th, 1S76. We, the undersigned, attended a test seance for materialisation, given by James T. Morris on the evening of May 10th, 1876, and are fully satisfied that under the test conditions the faces which appeared at the aperture, and the forms which stepped from the cabinet, were not that of Mr. Morris; also that it was impossible for a confederate to be introduced into the cabinet without  being detected.  Dr. Wesley Clark, Mrs. Mary A. Potts,  Jno. S. Wright, W. B. Potts,  Mrs. E. Eveland, Dr. B. Atkinson,  Mr. J. Eveland, J. F. Baker,  J. W. Garrison, Aug. Siekert,  J. Donnelley, Jacob Eldridge,  M. B. Moore, Miss C. M. Sharpe,  Mrs. J. Donnelley, Dr. W. H. Thomas, H. L. Austin, S. W. Peese, Thos. Jordan, A. M. White. B. Atkins." 

There is no imaginable "secret trap door" trickery that can explain such a report.  A skeptic's only resort here is to imagine a conspiracy to defraud among the named witnesses, or perhaps a lying writer who made up the names of all the witnesses. 

On page 23 of the August 11, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist, we have an account by J. T. Rhodes of a seance of Miss Fairlamb, attended on  July 30 1876. We hear of the materialization of a figure called Cissy who grows from "a small white patch, about the size of a lady’s handkerchief" to "a draped white figure, about two-and-a-half to three feet in height" who speaks in monosyllables. 

On page 42 of the August 25, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist, we have an account by Alfred Russel Wallace, co-founder of the theory of evolution by natural selection. It is one of very many reports made in 1876 of inexplicable phenomena occurring around the medium Henry Slade. Slade was famous for seances in which witnesses would report writing inexplicably occurring on slates. Wallace gives this account of a meeting with Slade "in broad daylight" on August 9, 1876, there being no one present but himself and Slade: 

"Writing came upon the upper part of the slate, when I myself held it pressed close up to the under-side of the table, both Dr. Slade’s hands being upon the table in contact with my other hand. The writing was audible while in progress. This one phenomenon is absolutely conclusive. It admits of no explanation or imitation by conjuring."

Wallace reports additional paranormal phenomena occurring. On page 67 of the September 8, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist, we hear a more dramatic account of a session with Henry Slade, one written by Louisa Andrews:

"Several of the stances which I attended daring my late stay with Dr. Slade in New York, were held during the day, the clear sunlight  streaming in through two large windows. Under these conditions, no  one being present but the medium and myself, a double slate placed upon the top of the table was filled inside with writing. This slate was  not touched by the medium, whose hands were clasping mine while the  communication was being written. Chairs several feet from us were overthrown and lifted again, being, at my request, replaced as they had stood before, and sometimes held for several seconds suspended in the air. Hands were felt and seen,...At one of these light seances a copy of  Webster’s unabridged dictionary, which lay upon a desk some distance off, was brought and fell upon the table, striking the hand of the medium  and bruising it severely. On another occasion a large walking-stick, which had been standing  against the wall at a distance from where we sat, came towards the table  and danced about on the floor, at my right hand and opposite the medium, as if it were alive....During my last visit to Dr. Slade I had only one sitting for materialization,..The medium used no cabinet or curtain, but simply turned the gas partially down in the room in which we had been sitting the greater part of the day. The forms gathered like a rapidly forming cloud, becoming gradually more dense, and taking shape before our eyes. They were extremely ethereal, so much so that objects were sometimes visible through them."

On page 84 to 88 of the September 22, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist, we have a long article by scientist William Barrett. Barrett describes witnessing people put under hypnosis who seemed to have powers of telepathy and clairvoyance that blossomed in such a state. On page 87 Barrett becomes the latest of innumerable distinguished witnesses testifying to the reality of mysterious raps. He states this:

"About twelve months ago I was told that the daughter of a gentleman of good position in society, a child not quite ten years old, was troubled with knockings, for which no cause could be assigned. These sounds came on whenever the child was in a passive condition, and apparently displayed  some intelligence, as they would keep time to a tune, or by rapping at certain letters, would spell out words. As the family were living in my neighbourhood, I made their  acquaintance, and obtained permission to examine these  mysterious knockings. I found that, in the full, glare of sunlight, when every precaution to prevent deception had been taken, still these raps would occur in different parts of the room, entirely out of reach of the child, whose hands and feet I was watching closely. A dozen times have I tested the phenomena in every way that the ingenuity of sceptical friends could suggest, and the result was that I could come to no other conclusion but that the sounds were real objective raps, displaying intelligence, and yet certainly not produced by any visible cause. I have often had the sounds occurring on a small table, above and below the surface of which my hands were placed, and have felt the jarring of the taps on that part of the table enclosed between my hands. I have taken sceptical friends to witness these phenomena,  and their testimony agrees with mine. It must be borne in mind that the conditions of the experiment are singularly unfavourable either for fraud or hallucination. To avoid the possibility of the former I have held the hands and feet  of the child, and still obtained the knockings ; they have occurred on the lawn, on an umbrella, far removed from the possibility of deception by servants."

On page 104 of the September 29, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist, we have a letter by a Professor Lankester describing a meeting he had with the previously mentioned Henry Slade. Lankester states a theory of some trickery going on by Slade, one he fails to back up by any good evidence. On the next page we read a quote by anatomist C. Carter-Blake, stating this about Lankester's theory:

"If Dr. Slade plays tricks, his modus operandi is something very different from that which Professor Lankester would suggest. The observers who have visited him, including some of the cleverest minds in science, have failed to detect any fraud. Professor Lankester has found out simply nothing." 

Similarly, on page 106 Alfred Russel Wallace (a biologist more accomplished than Lankester) disputes Lankester's claims:

"As I have now shown that Professor Lankester commenced his letter with an erroneous statement of fact, and a ' more than questionable ' statement of opinion, it is not to be wondered at that I find the remainder of his communication equally unsatisfactory. His account of what happened during his visit to Dr. Slade is so completely unlike what happened during mv own visit, as well as the recorded experiences of Serjeant Cox, Mr. Carter Blake, and many others, that I can only look upon it as a striking example of Dr. Carpenter’s theory of preconceived ideas. Professor Lankester went with the firm conviction that all he was going to see would be imposture, and he believes he saw imposture accordingly. The 'fumbling,' the 'manoeuvres,' the 'considerable interval of time ' between cleaning the slate and holding it under the table, and the writing occurring on the opposite side of the slate to that on which the piece of pencil was placed, were all absent when I witnessed the experiment ; while the fact that legible writing occurred on the clean slate when held entirely in my own hand while Dr. Slade’s hands were both upon the table and held by my other hand, such writing being distinctly audible while in progress ; and the further fact that Dr. Slade’s knees were always in sight, and that the slate was never rested upon them at all, render it quite impossible for me to accept the explanation of Professor Lankester and Dr. Donkin as applicable to any portion of the phenomena witnessed by me."

Based on his dubious speculations about what Slade was doing and not actual observations of Slade doing anything fraudulent, Lankester caused Slade to be arrested and put under trial for violating the Vagrancy Act prohibiting things such as fortune telling. Alfred Russel Wallace and other witnesses testified in the trial that they had observed inexplicable phenomenon when sitting with Henry Slade, and saw no sign of fraud.  You can read Wallace's testimony on page 161 of the document here.  He testified to have seen what appeared to be paranormal writing on a slate, occurring in three different meetings he had with Slade. We have this testimony by Wallace in response to questions:

"From beginning to end of your sitting was there anything indicative of imposture ?—I could see nothing whatever indicative of imposture. Were there any raps or movements that attracted your attention ?— I heard the raps and felt the touches which have been described, but the most remarkable thing was that the flat table, when my hands and those of Dr. Slade were clasped together, rose up, and almost instantaneously turned completely over on to the top of my head and slid down my back. (Laughter.) Was it possible that this could have been produced by Slade's feet or legs ?—I think not. It appeared to me to be absolutely impossible."

So not only did Wallace testify in court to seeing inexplicable writing produced in the presence of Slade, but also mysterious raps and the inexplicable levitation of a table (something reported by very many reliable witnesses of the nineteenth century, usually when Slade was not present).  The court also allowed to be introduced into evidence the written testimony of Edward W. Cox (sometimes referred to as Sergeant Cox because of some office he held).  The testimony is from page 18 of the August 11, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist. Cox testified this about a meeting he had with Slade:

"Instantly upon taking our seats very loud rapping came upon the floor. This was followed by a succession of furious blows upon the table, jarring my hands as they were laying upon it. These blows were repeated at any part of the table desired, by merely touching that spot with the finger, while the blows, as forcible as if given with a sledge hammer, were being made. Dr. Slade’s hands were on the table upon my hands, and his whole body to his feet was fully before my eyes. I am certain that not a muscle moved. Then he took the slate after I had carefully inspected it, to be assured that no writing was upon it, and placing there a piece of slate pencil, the size of a small grain of wheat, he pressed the slate tightly below but against the slab of the table. Presently I heard the sound as of writing on a slate. The slate was removed, and on it a zigzag line was drawn from end to end. At this moment the chair that I had described as standing by the table was lifted up to a level with the table, held in that, position for several seconds, and then dropped to the floor. While the chair was so suspended in the air, I carefully noted Dr. Slade. It was far beyond his reach. But his hands were under my hands, and his feet were fully in view near my own on the side of the table opposite to that on which the chair had risen."

We have here not merely a report of mysterious slate writing, but also a report of dramatic inexplicable raps and also a report of a dramatic levitation of a chair. On and on Edward Cox's account goes, with him reporting many other inexplicable phenomena such as the appearance of mysterious hands that touch and grab and shake Cox. Cox's report casts no suspicion on Slade.  

In the same edition on page 165 we have this written testimony addressed to Slade, testimony by attorney Clarke Irvine:

"I went to see you one afternoon at your house in New York. My name was never given to you ; I went from here almost direct, and was a perfect stranger in New York—never was there before; no one in your room but our two selves, and the sun shone into the window. As soon as I entered your room it seemed to me that invisible hands manipulated my person; my hands were seized by invisible hands. You did not offer to hold the little slate; I alone held it, you sitting off quite a distance. The slate, which I cleaned, was written upon both when I held it in my hand and when I held it under against the table top. My own name was written on the slate, and names of friends deceased twenty or twenty-five years were subscribed. I will swear you did not know the names, for no name was given to you by me—not even my own. You tried to hold an accordion, which was violently wrested from you, to your apparent alarm; I took hold of it and held it tightly in one hand, with the keys turned toward me. The force pulled violently and pushed, and the keys raised and fell to the tune of ' Home, sweet home.' I could not have started the tune had my life been the forfeit. I silently requested (mentally as it is called) that 'Hail, Columbia,' be played, and it was played. Also a dinner bell was rung in mid air, while whirled about by a power to me unseen."

Despite so many witnesses testifying in writing to have seen a wide variety of extremely dramatic paranormal phenomena in the presence of Henry Slade, with some of this testimony being introduced into court, we learn on page 162 of the November 3, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist that Slade was found guilty in the court case, and sentenced to three months of hard labor on a charge of violating a Vagrancy Act prohibiting fortune-telling and similar activity. On the same page we read the judge's ruling, which makes it clear that he paid no attention to all the testimony that was providing indicating that authentic paranormal phenomena had been produced near Slade, but that he only paid attention to the speculations of Lankester.  According to the document here, Slade was "released on a law quibble," which makes it sound like the case was eventually dismissed on a technicality. The page here says that " the conviction was afterwards quashed on appeal to the Middlesex Sessions, for a formal error in the conviction."

Skeptics mentioning Slade typically claim inaccurately that he was convicted of fraud. He was merely convicted of the much lesser charge of vagrancy, and that charge was later overruled and thrown out, as the two previous quotes show. In the Psi Encyclopedia we read this about the trial:

"Finally, Slade’s trial is typically reported as a case in which Slade was convicted of fraud. But as a matter of fact, the testimony presented against Slade at the trial was weak in the extreme, and the judge based his verdict largely on the intuition that Slade’s phenomena could not possibly have been genuine because they conflicted with established natural laws."

In the coming years the astronomy professor Johann Carl Friedrich Zöllner published an account of a test he did with Slade on May 8, 1877, one in which Zöllner reported a paranormal-seeming result that apparently could not possibly have been produced by fraud. On page 165 of his book Transcendental Physics, we read this:

"I obtained one of the most remarkable confirmations of this apparent suspension of the law of impenetrability of matter in a sitting on the 9th May, 1878, from eleven to a quarter-past eleven in the morning. Immediately after I had sat down with Slade at the card-table, I conversed with him at first on the power of his invisible intelligent beings, by means of which material bodies could be apparently penetrated with as much facility as if they were permeable. Slade shared my amazement, assuring me that never until now had such an abundance of this sort of phenomena been observed in his presence. Immediately after this remark he took up with his left hand two slates of equal size from among the slates which lay on the table at his left, and which had been bought and cleaned by myself. He handed me these two slates, and desired me to press the one upon the upper surface, the other against the under surface of the table, with my left hand, so that the thumb of my left hand pressed the upper, my other four fingers the under slate, against the flat of the table, as may be seen from the woodcut, Plate  VII. Beneath the upper slate on the table, a splinter of slate-pencil had first been laid, so that it was thus completely covered by the upper slate. Slade then placed both his hands on the middle of the table, about a foot from the two slates, and requested me to cover his hands with my right hand. Scarcely was this done when I distinctly heard writing on one of the slates which were pressed firmly by me against the table. After the conclusion of the writing was signified, as usual, by three ticks quickly in succession, I took the slates apart, and of course expected that the one which had been above the table would be that written on, since on the table still lay the bit of pencil in the same place in which I had laid it a minute before. How great was my astonishment to find the under slate written on, on the side that had been turned to the table. Just as if the bit of pencil had written through the three-quarter inch of oak table, or as if the latter had, for the invisible writer, not been there at all. Upon the slate was the following message in English : —

"We shall not do much for you this morning, — we wish to replenish your strength for this evening; you will require to be very passive, or we shall not be able to accomplish our work."

Below is the Plate VII referred to in the text above:

Faced with this testimony of the paranormal and much other testimony of the paranormal in Zöllner's book, a book by an accomplished scientist, skeptics resorted to the worst type of gaslighting, by claiming that Zöllner had lost his mind. But the book shows no sign of any such mental decline, but instead reads exactly like the work of a calm and careful observer.  

On page 126 of the October 13, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist, we have an account by Henry D. Jencken.  He describes a seance occurring on September 6, 1876  "at 51, Holland-street, Kensington, the house of Mr. S. C. Hall, the well-known Editor of the Art Journal." Several witnesses are named, including "Mr. and Mrs. Hall,

Mr. and Mrs. Mayo, Dr. Nethereliff of the Chelsea infirmary," Jencken and his wife. We are told of the appearance of an apparition:

"After a short pause, the door of the room in which we 

were sitting was gently opened, and a form was distinctly 

seen in the semi-light, as it streamed into the darkened room, from the hall lamp. The apparition—for I cannot describe it otherwise—appeared to be semi-transparent. I could all but see objects through it, and yet the outline was complete. To make sure that no optical delusion was carrying us away, questions as to who saw the figure were put all round, and answered affirmatively, save in the case of two members present who were seated with their backs to the door."

We are told of the appearance of a spirit hand, which raised a pencil and wrote briefly:

"A luminous, small, beautifully-shaped hand then descended from the side at which I was sitting, that is to say, at, the opposite side to Mrs. Jeneken. The hand seized a pencil which was lying on the table and wrote the letters  ' E. W. E.' . The power of holding the pencil then evidently failed, The pencil, which had been held between the forefinger and  third finger, dropped on the table, and the hand raised itself high, over head, and disappeared. After a short pause it reappeared, descended, touched the table, took hold of the  pencil, and wrote the words ' God bless y—.' At the letter  y the strength again appeared to give way, the pencil dropped, the hand rose quickly, and was gone."

Jencken provided a sketch of what he saw, and stated five others saw it.  His sketch is below.  He stated, "The luminosity around the wrist was singularly beautiful." 

Many people in the nineteenth century made claims similar to the one above. For example, there had occurred in the January, 1874 edition of the Quarterly Journal of Science the publication of the paper "NOTES OF AN ENQUIRY INTO THE PHENOMENA CALLED SPIRITUAL, DURING THE YEARS 1870-73" by the leading physicist William Crookes, inventor of the Crookes tube that was the technological ancestor of the television set, and the co-discoverer of the element thallium.  On this page, Crookes describes seeing a writing "spirit hand" similar to that reported by Jencken above. Crookes states, "A luminous hand came down from the upper part of the room, and after hovering near me for a few seconds, took the pencil from my hand, rapidly wrote on a sheet of paper, threw the pencil down, and then rose up over our heads, gradually fading into darkness."

The Jencken account quoted above meets high standards of evidence, as it is a first-hand account, it was published within a month after the reported sighting, and several witnesses are listed. The account is only one of many cases in which more than one witness reported seeing the same apparition. For many other cases, see my posts below:

When Two or More See the Same Apparition

When an Apparition Is Seen by Multiple Observers: 17 Cases

When an Apparition Is Seen by Multiple Observers: 17 More Cases

More Apparitions Seen by Multiple Observers
Many an Apparition Is Seen by More Than One
Still More Apparitions Seen by Multiple Observers

When an Apparition Is Seen by Not Just One

The 1878 book Psychography by the respected scholar William Stainton Moses (writing under a pen name) documents numerous cases of witnesses reporting mysterious writing occurring in the presence of Henry Slade, with the accounts often describing observation conditions seeming to allow no possibility of fraud, or events (such as furniture levitations) seemingly incapable of being faked. On page 123 of a later (1882) edition we have an interesting list of distinguished people who reported seeing paranormal phenomena. We get this list (with an asterisk indicating someone no longer living when the list was compiled):

"TESTIMONY TO PSYCHICAL PHENOMENA.

Science. — The Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, F.R.S., President E.A.S.; W. Crookes, Fellow and Gold Medallist of the Royal Society; C. Varley, F.R.S., C.E. ; A. R. Wallace, the eminent Naturalist; W. F. Barrett, F.R.S.E., Professor of Physics in the Royal College of Science, Dublin ; Dr. Lockhart Robertson ; *Dr. J. Elliotson, F.R.S., sometime President of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London; *Professor de Morgan, sometime President of the Mathematical Society of London; Dr. William Gregory, F.R.S.E., sometime Professor of Chemistry in the University of Edinburgh ; *Dr. Ashburner, *Mr. Rutter, *Dr. Herbert Mayo, F.R.S., etc. etc.

* Professor F. Zollner, of Leipzig, author of 'Transcendental Physics,' etc.; Professors G. T. Fechner, Scheibner, and J. H. Fichte, of Leipzig ; Professor W. E. Weber, of Gbttingen ; Professor Hoffman, of Wiirzburg ; Professor Perty, of Berne ; Professors Wagner and Butleroff, of Petersburg ; *Professors Hare and Mapes, of U.S.A. ; Dr. Robert Friese, of Breslau ; Mons. Camille Flammarion, Astronomer, etc., etc.

Literature. — The Earl of Dunraven ; T. A. Trollope; S. C. Hall; Gerald Massey ; Captain R. Burton ; Professor Cassal, LL.D. ; *Lord Brougham; *Lord Lytton; *Lord Lyndhurst; * Archbishop Whately; *Dr. Robert Chambers, F.R.S.E.; * William M. Thackeray; *Nassau Senior ; *George Thompson ; *Wm. Howitt ; *Serjeant Cox ; *Mrs. Browning, etc., etc.

Bishop Clarke, Rhode Island, U.S.A.; Darius Lyman, U.S.A.; Professor W. Denton ; Professor Alexander Wilder ; Professor Hiram Corson; Professor George Bush; and twenty-four Judges and ex Judges of the U.S. Courts ; Victor Hugo ; Baron and Baroness von Vay ; *W. Lloyd Garrison, U.S.A.; *Hon. R. Dale Owen, U.S.A.; *Hon. J. W. Edmonds, U.S.A.; *Epes Sargent; *Baron du Potet; *Count A. de Gasparin ; *Baron L. de Guldenstubbe, etc., etc.

Social Position. — H. I. H. Nicholas, Duke of Leuchtenberg ; H.M.S.H. the Prince of Solms; H.S.H. Prince Albrecht of Solms ; *H.S.H. Prince Emile of Sayn Wittgenstein; Hon. Alexander Aksakof, Imperial Councillor of Russia ; the Hon. J. L. O'Sullivan, sometime Minister of U.S.A. at the Court of Lisbon; M. Favre Clavairoz, late Consul-General of France at Trieste ; the late Emperors of *Russia and *France....etc., etc".