Legend
< A Permanent "Miracle" for Public Examination (continued from page 7-217) >
any trace of a joint, even as fine as a hair line, in either of the rings. The one ring was of finely polished natural ivory; the other a common wooden curtain ring, varnished, with the natural grain of the wood everywhere clearly visible. Mr. Gillis left the same afternoon for Leipzig with the rings, where the best thing which he could do with them would be to have a thin shaving taken off one side of each, all the way round, in the presence of all the Professors at the University, who could then submit to microscopic observation the two annular areas laid bare. No artificial joint could escape detection beneath such microscopic examination, and the continuity of the cellular fabric of both wood and ivory could be ocularly traced. But so far as critical observation with out the aid of a microscope can give information, there is no doubt that the two solid rings have been interlinked.
When Mr. Gillis left The Spiritualist office, he sent a telegram to Professor Zollner, of which the following is a translation:—
After getting in former sittings direct writing, and three knots like yours in an endless cord, I have just had my ivory ring interlinked in a wooden one. Julius Gillis from St. Petersburg. In the presence of the mediums Mr. Williams, Mr. and Mrs. Herne, and Mr. Rita, with the additional presence of Mr. Christian Reimers.
This is the second great new scientific phenomenon observed this year, which ought to have been first published in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, but which is missing from those pages in consequence of the neglect of public and scientific duty on the part of the Society in not investigating psychic phenomena, and in officially rejecting the paper once sent in to it by Mr. Crookes, containing some of the simpler and more elementary facts. The other great discovery of the year, missing from the pages of Philosophical Transactions, is that the body of an adult medium varies so in weight during strong physical manifestations that at times it amounts but to forty or fifty pounds, as indicated by automatic self-registering apparatus. Whatever theory anybody may apply to the phenomenon, the observed fact is of transcendent interest.
The circumstance is significant, and will long discredit English science, that when the rings were interlinked they were at once taken to the Professors at Leipzig, no representatives of any scientific body in London being now generally employed in the investigation of psychic phenomena.
Mr. Gillis and Herr Christian Reimers had the rings photographed, true size, before they were taken to Leipzig, and one of the prints can be seen at The Spiritualist Branch Office. Although the photographing is not of the worst quality, neither is it of the best, for at the top of the picture are faint line markings, due to the projecting edge of the “dipper” having caused the nitrate of silver solution to play in unequal streams against the collodion film when it was lowered into the bath.
The word “miracle” at the beginning of this article is not used in the sense that there is any infraction of law in the interlinked rings phenomenon. Natural laws, not yet understood, govern spiritual phenomena.
The Ring Test
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Editor's notes