he more
intelligent Spiritualists understood such matters, and the Ladies' Aid
(Spiritualist) Society of Boston, recently had considerable amusement
in the exhibition in their parlors of the materializing and
dematerializing wire apparatus used by the fraudulent medium, Mrs.
Ross, which was said to have been carried in her bustle. Mrs. Ross
when prosecuted for her frauds was found to be protected by the law of
coverture which makes the husband alone responsible. This is a relic
of the idea of female subordination and obedience which ought to be
abolished. The progress of spiritualism has been marked by as many
follies as that of any popular movement, and the bequest of $60,000,
by Mr. Seybert, to the old fogies of the Pennsylvania University was
among the stupidest of these follies. If a friend of Galileo had made
such a bequest to the Catholic church in his time, to get an opinion
of the new astronomy, it would have been as sensible a proceeding. It
will however have one good result; it will erect a permanent monument
to the ignorance of the universities, a record from which they cannot
hereafter escape. Prof. Leidy was one of the salaried commissioners
whose mental status was thus exhibited in the last journal:

"Your doctrine of life eternal,
And everything else supernal,
Might well be pronounced an infernal
Delusion!"

THE EVILS THAT NEED ATTENTION, mentioned in the JOURNAL for May, are
as rampant as ever. The big combination in Chicago to raise the price
of wheat by a corner, utterly burst on the 14th of June, leaving a few
ruined speculators. The _Chicago News_ says: "What is called buying
and selling futures in grain, is no more buying and selling in the
innocent and proper interpretation of the words than the wagering on
horse races is buying and selling horses. It is a species of gambling
as pernicious to public morals as it is contrary to public policy."
The _Chicago Herald_ says, "No one is in love with a cornerer who
corners. Nobody wastes any pity on a cornerer who gets cornered
himself." Such crimes in a petty way may be punished, but we need law
for the millionaire gamblers who not only rob each other, but fleece
the entire nation at the same time.

CONDENSED ITEMS.--_Mesmerism, in Paris._ M. G. de Torcy has introduced
a mesmerized woman into the lion's cage, where she unconsciously puts
her head in the lion's mouth: then, in a state of cataleptic rigidi