circumstances, sporadically recorded in books of travel.

The phenomena are certainly of a kind to encourage the savage theory of
the wandering soul. How else, thinkers would say, can the seer visit the
distant place or person, and correctly describe men and scenes which, in
the body, he never saw? Or they would encourage the Polynesian belief
that the 'spirit' of the thing or person looked for is suspended by a god
over the water, crystal, blood, ink, or whatever it may be. Thus, to
anthropologists, the discovery of crystal-gazing as a thing widely
diffused and still flourishing ought to be grateful, however much they
may blame my childish credulity. I may add that I have no ground to
suppose that crystal-gazing will ever be of practical service to the
police or to persons who have lost articles of portable property. But I
have no objection to experiments being made at Scotland Yard.[20]

[Footnote 1: Information, with a photograph of the stones, from a
correspondent in West Maitland, Australia.]

[Footnote 2: _Report Ethnol. Bureau_, 1887-88, p. 460; vol. ii. p. 69.
Captain Bourke's volume on _The Medicine Men of the Apaches_ may also be
consulted.]

[Footnote 3: Fitzroy, _Adventure_, vol. ii. p. 389.]

[Footnote 4: _L'Histoire de la grand Ile Madagascar_, par le Sieur de
Flacourt. Paris, 1661, ch. 76. Veue de deux Navires de France predite par
les Negres, avant que l'on en peust sçavoir des Nouvelles, &c.]

[Footnote 5: _Religion of the Amazulu_, p. 341.]