mile has really been ridden in less than a minute, though it was under circumstances that did not prove the cyclist's exceptional speed. "Mile-aMinute" Murphy rode over a mile stretch, between the rails of the New York Central road, on a special board roadway, behind an express train. His wonderful time was fiftyfour and three-fifths seconds for the mile. This, of course, was greatly aided by the terrific suction exerted by the rapidly moving train, but the feat loses none of its spectacular features.

Among the skaters J. Nilssen made a mile in two minutes and thirty-six seconds. Morris Wood, of the Beacon Skating Club, of New York, is the winner of the speed skating championship of the United States. He made a distance of 3,280 feet in one minute and forty-seven seconds. An average speed of twenty-seven miles an hour has been made in this sport.

For more than a quarter of a century there has been a systematic campaign by the best athletes in the world to run one hundred yards faster than it had ever been accomplished before. Gradually this record has been battered down, by the slightest fractions of a second until now it is placed at nine and three-fifths seconds. This remarkable time is authentically credited to Dan Kelly, of Oregon, who ranks officially as the only man yet to make such a mark. This tremendous speed is the greatest ever credited to man and could it be maintained for a mile the time would prove astonishing.

Charles M. Daniels of New York, who has performed many aquatic feats, holds

nearly all the world's swimming records from twentyfive yards up to a mile. În England last season he swam one hundred yards in fiftyfive and two-fifths seconds, a rate of 6,498 yards, or of nearly four miles in an hour. This shows that man has now begun to conquer water, as he has the air. While the feat of swimming is old as the race, never before has it been possible to come so close to the speed of fish. The record swim of a mile was made by R. Caril in twenty-one minutes, eleven and two-fifths seconds.

Not long since, one test of man's endurance was made in France under the supervision of scientists. A young man of average strength, whose bodily vigor had been conserved by good habits, agreed to go through an hour of strenuous exercise each day for eight days. The nature of this exercise to be changed each day.

On the first day he rode on a rough riding hunter, making 10.56 miles in the hour. The second day he rode a bicycle 19.88 miles in the hour. On the following day he ran on foot in an hour 8.69 miles. On the fourth day he shot eightytwo pigeons within an hour and on the fifth walked five miles. The next day he swam 1.86 miles in the given time; on the seventh day he played tennis, and on the last day drove an automobile 27.96 miles within an hour. The jury which was to decide his physical condition gave him an average of eighty.

And so this mad race against time goes on, until it begins to look as if, as the wag says, we may catch up with ourselves in our wild chase around the globe.

RXOOXCIENCE, exact and

S

practical, has come to the aid of the "psychical research" investigators with an tirely new theory in re

en

MOSCOW gard to ghosts. The discovery, though as yet only hypothetical, is that such phantoms may in fact exist, and that they are sufficiently material in their nature to admit of study, and even of detailed analysis.

According to this idea, indeed, the ghost of reality is properly to be regarded as a chemical phenomenon. It has a recognizable substance, however tenuous and intangible, and may actually be reproduced experimentally in the laboratory.

For authority on this point, the writer is permitted to refer to one of the foremost of living chemists, Prof. Charles E. Munroe, Dean of the George Washington University, in Washington, D. C. He is not only a believer in ghosts-at all events, in the possibility of such phenomena-but he says that they can be made artificially. It is, he thinks, not at all unlikely that the laboratory process for making counterfeit spectres is

merely a reproduction of nature's own method of ghost-manufacture.

Apparitions, of course, are usually associated in one way or another with tragedies. Somebody, for example, is murdered under exceptionally distressing and dramatic circumstances, and-the corpse being hidden by the perpetrator of the deed-the ghost thereafter haunts the scene, forlornly striving to attract sympathetic attention, and unable to find rest until the body shall be discovered and provided with Christian burial.

Such a case may be regarded as typical in the history and literature of phantoms. That there should be a ghost under circumstances of the kind, and that it should continue to "walk" until "laid" in the manner described, Professor Munroe regards as the most natural thing in

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the world. The bones of the murdered person to touch the point of explanation in a word-contain two substances, phosphorus and calcium, which readily combine to form a stuff so inflammable as to be self-ignitible. Under favoring conditions, this stuff will evaporate and pass off into the atmosphere as a luminous gas, which, within the walls of a building, or outdoors on a still night, might easily assume a spectre-like aspect.

"I will give you an off-hand, practical illustration," said the professor, in a recent talk. "I have here, in this jar, some of the very stuff in question-phosphide of calcium. Just a little piece of it I will take for the purpose, and I will make for you, by laboratory method, an artificial "corpse light"-a counterfeit of one of those mysterious "candles" which are said to be carried about by dead people in graveyards."

Whereupon Professor Munroe simply dropped a bit of the phosphide into a saucer partly filled with water, and added: "Watch it!" A few seconds passed, and then the stuff suddenly caught fire, instantly going out again. But, as it took fire, it gave out a small ring of smoke-the most beautifully symmetrical ring imaginable-which rose into the air and gradually expanded with its ascent. Before it had time to disappear, there was another little burst of flame in the saucer, followed by another ring; and so on, flame succeeding flame and ring succeeding ring.

"Anybody may try the experiment for himself," said the professor. "Phosphide

of calcium is a common chemical compound. But it should be kept carefully in an air-tight glass jar, lest it take fire combustion. Water, by spontaneous you see, sets it afire. In like manner, if

derived by natural processes from the bones of a murdered man, it might, especially if the bones were hidden in a damp place, give off a luminous cloud, visible at night, and, as it hung and wavered in the air, quite possibly assuming an aspect like that of the conventional ghost, with its peculiar and characteristic drapery."

Professor Munroe is of the opinion that it would be entirely practicable, with a little experimentation, to produce fullfledged spectres in the laboratory, utilizing phosphorus compounds as raw material. Even their shape, he says, could be controlled with the aid of magnets, by which gases, especially when electrified, are strongly attracted. Thus it would be a matter of no serious difficulty to make them take forms strikingly and even startlingly ghostlike.

There would be no trouble, says the great chemist, in weighing such a ghost. All that is necessary would be to pass the gaseous vapor, generated in

the manner suggested, through some substance that would absorb it. Then, with the help of delicately accurate apparatus, the substance could be weighed first containing the phosphorstuff, and again after the latter was removed

tions. In many instances, at all events, such phantoms, when not entirely imaginary, are gaseous emanations of a selfluminous character. This supposition will account satisfactorily for numerous ghosts which have been so well authenticated as seriously to challenge incredulity. It affords a basis, in fact, for belief in phenomena of the kind without acceptance of the supernatural.

The theory in question is endorsed, out of his own experience, by Prof. W. J. McGee, former President of the Anthropological Society, and a scientist of the highest reputation, who has himself beheld phantoms.

Many years ago, Professor McGee was

from it. The difference would be the weight of the phantom.

It appears, then, that science has now for the first time hit upon a plausible theory to account, on natural and purely physical grounds, for spectral appari

counter to

as

placed, as signee, in charge of the stock of a bankrupt store in a small town. Another store in the same town had recently been. robbed, and on this account, feeling anxious for the safety of the property commit

ted to his care, he thought it wisest to sleep on the premises. His bed was a counter in the rear of the building, the interior of which, thanks to iron shutters, was so dark that even in broad daylight hardly a ray entered.

One hot, muggy night it was midsummer

he

felt thirsty, and rose from his couch on the a water cooler, be some dis

seek which happened to tance away. He got the drink, and, as he was groping his way back through the pitchy blackness, he saw on his left something which bore the aspect of a faint