I
’T occasionally happens that our knowledge of the finer forces of Nature is increased by the researches of sceptical scientists who are working on quite another theory. They may be intending to prove a purely physical phenomenon, but find themselves confronted by a psychical revelation. If open to conviction, they may, like Prof. Hare, Prof. Gregory, Mr. Crookes, Prof. Zollner, Prof. Buchanan, and Mr. Wallace, step outside the circle o f sciolism and become the brave defenders of occult truth ; if the contrary, they remain Brewsters, Faradays, Carpenters, Huxleys and Tyndalls, that is to say, prejudiced adversaries of a spiritual truth for whose comprehension they lack aptitude. When, in 1840, Dr. Buchanan was told by Bishop Polk that the touching of a brass door-knob gave him a brassy taste in the mouth, the stupendous fact of psychometrical law sprang up in his mind, and he set to testing experimentally the theory. When Baron Von Reichenbach— until then merely a renowned metallurgical chemist— found that a certain patient in hospital was affected injuriously by lying with her head to the east or west, and suffered muscular spasms at the approach of a magnet, his great and open mind instantly set to work upon a line of research which gave the world his discovery of Odyle. Conversely, it has frequently occurred that popular superstitions have been uprooted and destroyed upon scientific examination of their basic facts. And so, the wise investigator, mindful of both these circumstances, will suspend theory and avoid prejudice until he has got at the bottom of his subject. Bacon’s rule, we know, was this: “ We have set it down as a law to ourselves to examine things to the bottom, and not to receive upon credit, or reject upon improbabilities, until there hath passed a due examination.” The mystery of what is known as “ The Baris&l Guns ” offers an excellent occasion to exemplify this sound principle. For the benefit o f distant readers let me explain what are these “ guns ” ; but first as to the locality of Baris&l. This is a small town on the western bank o f the Beeghaye River, one of the numberless smaller channels of the sacred Ganges. As the crow flies, it is some 65 miles due north o f the Bay of Bengal. Like the entire Gangetic Delta, the land about is flat, the surface only a few feet above the water level. There are no moun tains, or even hills, indicated on the map until we come to the ranges to the north-east, which separate Bengal from Burma, and in which the place called Cherra Poonjee is distant from BarisSl in a straight line