ld and bade her try to find the thing thought of, the
thought-concentration of course continuing during the search. The result
is thus reported: "In this way I wrote down, among other things, a
hair-brush--it was brought; an orange--it was brought; a wine-glass--it
was brought; an apple--it was brought; and so on, until many objects had
been selected and found by the child."

Passing over the details of many other experiments we find that the
following remarkable results were obtained by the committee: "Altogether,
three hundred and eighty-two trials were made in this series. In the case
of letters of the alphabet, of cards, and of numbers of two figures, the
chances of success on a first trial would naturally be 25 to 1, 52 to 1,
and 89 to 1, respectively; in the case of surnames they would of course be
infinitely greater. Cards were far most frequently employed, and the odds
in their case may be taken as a fair medium sample, according to which,
out of a whole series of three hundred and eighty-two trials, the average
number of successes at the first attempt by an ordinary guesser would be
seven and one-third. Of our trials, one hundred and twenty-seven were
successes on the first attempt, fifty-six on the second, nineteen on the
third--MAKING TWO HUNDRED AND TWO, OUT OF A POSSIBLE THREE HUNDRED AND
EIGHTY-TWO!" Think of this, while the law of averages called for only
seven and one-third successes at first trial, the children obtained one
hundred and twenty-seven, which, given a second and third trial, they
raised to two hundred and two! You see, this takes the matter entirely out
of the possibility of coincidence or mathematical probability.

But this was not all. Listen to the further report of the committee on
this point: "The following was the result of one of the series. The thing
selected was divulged to none of the family, and five cards running were
named correctly on a first trial. The odds against this happening once in
a series were considerably over a million to one. There were other similar
batches, the two longest runs being eight consecutive guesses, once with
cards, and once with names; where the adverse odds in the former case were
over one hundred and forty-two millions to one; and in the other,
something incalculably greater." The opinion of eminent mathematicians who
have examined the above results is that the hypothesis of mere coincidence
is practically excluded in the scientific consideration of