ulty. The average wool-sorter
will outvie an artist in his perception of colour shades. An odour
that is distinctly recognizable by one person will not be
perceptible to others. In the matter of sound also the same
differences of perception will be noted. On a very still night one
can hear the sugar canes growing. Most people find the cry of a
bat to be beyond their range. The eye cannot discern intervals of
less than one-fiftieth of a second. Atmospheric vibration does
not become sound until a considerable frequency is attained.
Every movement we make displaces air but our sense of touch
does not inform us of it, but if we stand in a sunbeam the dust
particles will show that it is so. Our sense of feeling will not
register above certain degrees of heat or below certain degrees
of cold. Sensation, moreover, is not indefinitely sustained, as
anyone may learn who will follow the ticking of a watch for
five minutes continuously.

But quite apart from the sense and range of our perceptions, the
equality of a sense-impression is found to vary with different
persons, affecting them each in a different way. We find that
people have "tastes" in regard to form, colour, flavour, scent,
sound, fabric and texture. The experience is too general to need
illustration, but we may gather thence that, in relation to the
nervous system of man, every material body and state of matter
has a variable effect. These remarks will clear the ground for a
statement of my views upon the probable effect a crystal may
have upon a sensitive person.

CHAPTER II.

MATERIALS AND CONDITIONS

The crystal is a clear pellucid piece of quartz or beryl,
sometimes oval in shape but more generally spherical. It is
accredited by Reichenbach and other researchers with highly
magnetic qualities, capable of producing in a suitable subject
a state analogous to the ordinary "waking trance" of the
hypnotists. It is believed that all bodies convey, or are the
vehicles of certain universal property called od or odyle
(od-hyle), which is not regarded as a force but as an inert and
passive substance underlying the more active forces familiar to
us in kinetic, calorific and electrical phenomena. In this respect
it holds a position analogous to the argon of the atmosphere,
and is capable of taking up the vibrations of those bodies to
which it is related and which it invests. It would perhaps not be
amiss to regard it as static ether. Of itself it has no active
pro