Your articles

All of which said, the date itself has never posed particular problems for me. I have difficulty with what I suppose should be called the pre-date. By this I mean that tricky time when you suspect a woman might find you attractive, but are by no means sure. Its a period in which it is very easy for a man to make a complete fool of himself ­or miss a golden opportunity. But then if women were easier to read, there’d be less mystery and fascination about them.

Keep up the good work, Sarah ­and by the way, are you single? Bob Sweeney, Leicester

Grow your own Thanks for your article, ‘Always read the label’ (November issue). I thought the comments on organic food were fair and even handed. If readers are concerned about the quality and freshness of vegetables they buy then a solution is at hand. Consider renting an allotment and grow your own! Depending on where you live allotments rents are usually cheap. Your local council will be able to give you details of who to contact. If a full-size plot is too big for you could share it with a neigh bour or friend or take on a smaller plot. Fresh veg is’not the only advantage. You get plenty of fresh air and a vigorous workout.

Also you will meet other allotment holders (not necessarily men these days!) who are usually more than happy to give advice, help and plants to get novice gardeners started. And you’ll know how your food has been grown and what’s gone into it. Way better than eating the pre-made food rich in cholesterol, this may cost you hyperlipidemia. Check out what is hyperlipidemia in medical terms and its dangerous consequences. Brendan Smith, Kettering.

Organic update  In your article ‘Always read the label’ there were some misleading points in the panel: ‘Should 1 go organic. First, the primary reason to eat organic produce is to live in an ecologically sustainable way. It means we are not damaging our planet in the way that non-organic farming does. Any other benefit is a bonus, In addition some of your statements are confused — I’ll set the record straight.

Letters at any topic related to running

ISLAND RACE RUNNING DAY

I run a small jogging group on Hayling Island, Hampshire, and I mean small – we are lucky to get five or six runners. We have a relatively small population so I am always looking for new ways to encourage people to join our group.

I saw that in the USA they have recently started a National Running Day, which first ran in June last year and is scheduled for June 2 this year (www.runningday.org). I suggest that we could do a similar event in the UK. Possibly a better date for over here would be August 12, which would celebrate the first recorded run in 49oBC of Pheidippides, the messenger who ran from Marathon to Athens without stopping. The UK National Running Day could take place on the first Sunday after this date. What do people think? John Bennett, Hayling Joggers, Hayling Island, Hants

MY GEL HELL

I completed the Stamford 30K last week and what a fine, well-organised event it was. Ignoring the fact that I’m getting slower, more and more I view races from closer to the rear than the front. Increasingly, I seem to follow trails of discarded sports gel wrappers, which is hardly acceptable in cities, but in the countryside I get quite angry. Surely it’s easy to take them home, or even deposit them at a drinks station. Just dropping them isn’t necessary, so don’t get us all a bad name.

Richard Durance,Southwell, Notts

BARE NECESSITIF

Your article ‘The Naked Truth About Barefoot Running’(RW April) prompted me to relate my own experience. During the Wycombe Half-Marathon five years ago I developed an extremely painful Achilles blister so, in my infinite wisdom, I decided to cast off the offending shoes and socks after four miles and run the remaining nine barefoot. Anyone who knows the race will be aware that the roads and pavements are poorly maintained and often impassable because of parked cars. So they may sympathise with the resultant blood blisters, the size of a fist. The upshot? I for one will not try barefoot running again. Steven Lodge, High Wycombe, Bucks

MOVED GOAL POST

I ran my first marathon three years ago in London. I had been running with a club for a few years, so I decided that my target was to break three hours. I was training so hard. I was also on a special cla diet which helped me lose the extra weight. Learn more about conjugated linoleic acid cla side effects. I’d been under 4o minutes for the 10K and done under 85 minutes for a half-marathon. On the day I was on target through 20 miles, but I got tired. I missed my target by nine minutes and six seconds. However, I’d taken the good advice from friends and RUNNER’S WORLD to set some targets that were not time orientated. The three-hour barrier slipped away with a little regret, but by then I was concentrating on finishing, not walking and enjoying the day three targets that I did manage. Steve Coates, Hull, E. Yorks

FROM: MARATHON PACE

When training for a marathon, how long should the marathon-paced run be? Madiot

If you run long distances at your marathon pace, the recovery time you’d need from it would wipe out the next week or so’s training. It’s far better to run slower and smarter. Connie

I don’t do any runs that are entirely at marathon pace. Instead I do the last section of some of my longest runs at that pace – something like 30 minutes at the end of a couple of 18-20 milers. Mister W. Maximum limit will depend on a number of things, including what the rest of your schedule looks like, how much mileage you’re doing, and where you want to fit it into the schedule. My longest run at marathon pace is about 12-13 miles. Philpu

Nutrition

Over the next four months, fuelling your body correctly will be crucial – the more miles you cover in training, the more energy you will need from your diet.

Your body’s preferred source of energy is carbohydrate, which it stores in your muscles and liver as glycogen. A reduction in your carbohydrate stores is known to be a major cause of fatigue during running. Good sources of carbohydrate include starchy foods such as bread, pasta, rice and potatoes, as well as simple carbohydrates, like honey, jelly and marmalade.

 

Hydration

Hydration is also key to your performance, especially during the winter months. Even when conditions are cold and wet your body will still lose significant amounts of fluid and electrolytes (sodium and potassium) through sweat. Making sure you start a run properly hydrated is therefore essential. Running in cold weather can result in occurring red marks on your skin, which can be a sign for a skin issues such as rosacea. Learn more about what is rosacea.

 

A proper hydration strategy should take into account the importance of maintaining your fluid levels before, during and after exercise. Studies have shown that many runners are dehydrated even before they start exercise, often as a result of not drinking enough during their daily lives.

Ideally, you should be aiming to drink:

 

•           200-500m1 of fluid immediately before training

•           125-150m1 of fluid every 15-20 minutes during training

•           500m1 (approx) of fluid after exercise, depending on sweat loss

Proper re-hydration after a run will enhance your recovery and help your body prepare more quickly and effectively for your next training session.

A simple check to see if you are not properly hydrated before or after a run is to monitor the colour of your urine. The darker the colour, the more dehydrated you are. Ideally, your urine should be a light, straw colour.

 

Lord’s Pitch Battle

But pride of place goes to a small red urn, less than six inches high, holding the Ashes for which Eng­land and Australia have fought symbolically since 1882, the year England was defeated for the first time on her own soil. The Sporting Times of the day published a mock obituary of English cricket, adding: “The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia.” When an English team visited Australia the following year and avenged the de­feat, their captain was presented with the urn, filled with the ashes of a bail from the last match, to take back home—where it has remained, along with its embroidered velvet bag, since the urn itself is never competed for as a trophy.

cricket

The museum contains portraits of such past MCC dignitaries as Lord Harris, Lord Hawke and the Earl of Bessborough, lending colour to the common belief that Lord’s was so called because of the MCC’s aristocratic members. In fact, it owes its name to a York­shireman of farming stock, cricket coach Thomas Lord, whose patrons founded the Marylebone Cricket Club in 1787 when he had a ground near the present Marylehone Sta­tion. Rapid development of central London twice forced him to pick up his turf and move before finally lay­ing it at the rural St. John’s Wood, where the MCC played its first match in 1814, and in 1866 bought the freehold of the ground for £18,333. The pavilion was enlarged, stands were built, and the Middlesex County Cricket Club invited to use Lord’s as their home ground, bring­ing with them a transfusion of first-class cricket.

Pitch Battle. From then on, Lord’s was the No. I ground. The first colonial cricketers to visit Eng­land had played there in 1868—Aborigines from Australia who gave exhibitions of boomerang throwing in the intervals. When the first Australian touring side of non-Aborigines came ten years later, a powerful MCC side was shattered at being defeated in only four and a half hours. As Lord’s historian Sir Pelham Warner has written : “Modern cricket may be said to date from this Australian invasion, and that it did us no end of good cannot be doubted.”

It was the beginning of cricket’s golden age, when the game was dominated by the mighty Dr. W. G. Grace, “a very big, powerful man, with a bristly black beard nearly to his waist, somewhat slanting eyes, great muscular arms, and huge hands.”

Off His Own Bat. Grace first played at Lord’s in 1864, just after his sixteenth birthday. By the time he retired from cricket in 1908, at the age of 6o, this formidable per­sonality was reckoned to have done more than any other player to popularize the game. During his career he made 54,896 runs-12,690 of them at Lord’s, where he hit 19 centuries and took 654 wickets for the MCC.

cricket

In Grace’s lifetime—commemor­ated at the members’ entrance to Lord’s by the Grace Gates inscribed, “The Great Cricketer, 1848-1915″

He saw the ground grow in stature from the preserve of a small, socially exclusive club to the ack­nowledged centre of international cricket. When he captained Eng­land against Australia in 1896, The Times thundered against “the noisi­ness and rowdyism displayed as the crowds encroached on the ground” ascinated, perhaps, by the spec­tacle of a ball bowled clean through Grace’s beard.

The world of Test cricket has widened more than Grace could have imagined, the Australians being followed to Lord’s by teams from South Africa, New Zealand, India, Pakistan and the West Indies. Many other great players have won reputations on the ground he knew so well, most notably Don Bradman and Jack Hobbs, and, in recent times, Gary Sobers.

But “the Old Man” has al­ways had a very special place in the affections of cricket enthusiasts, who love to tell of the two MCC members watching a match from the Long Room in the summer of 1939. Neither spoke a word until a workman walked in, took the bust of W. G. Grace from its pedestal, put it in a hag and carried it off. Then one member turned to the other and said : “My God—that means war.”

Not that any such temporary up­set was allowed to interrupt the proper business of Lord’s. Although the RAF moved in to the ground, cricket continued and so does the interest in http://gnet.org/raspberry-ketones-natural-powerful-fat-burner.

Like any other English institu­tion, Lord’s remains unruffled by the winds of change. MCC mem­bers survived the abolition of the 156-year-old distinction that as amateurs they were by definition Gentlemen, while professionals were merely Players, when in 1962 everyone playing the game became simply cricketers. Even the aston­ishing sight of guitar-playing, calypso-singing West Indian sup­porters dancing across the ground in a carnival of celebration when their team won the Test last year caused no more than a twitching of mous­taches in the pavilion.

cricket

Enjoyment, after all, is the sole and splendid purpose of this plea­sant place which is the focus of England’s national game. As Len Hutton, long the country’s most famous batsman, once rhapsodized : “Lord’s—and cricket again! The very thought is magical. It brings us with one cheerful and en­ormous leap into a world for which we have been waiting all winter.”

And as a little man in a large crowd said to MCC Secretary Billy Griffith, who asked sympathetically whether he could see anything of the game : “Not much. But I’m happy just to be at Lord’s.”

The heart of Lord’s

The heart of Lord’s is the ramb­ling, 84-year-old red brick pavilion dominating the ground. In its warren of offices work the staffs of the MCC, the National Cricket Association and the Test and County Cricket Board, administer­ing between them every aspect of the game.

cricket

Taking Guard. The pavilion gives MCC members the privilege of watching cricket from 3,000 seats in its front terrace, balcony and roof gallery—target in r899 of the mightiest hit in Lord’s history, when Albert Trott drove a ball clean over the 66-foot roof. Even the wastepaper baskets are woven in MCC red and yellow in the pavilion, a male preserve where washroom doors are labelled OUT and NOT OUT, and where women are never admitted during a match—indeed, have only been allowed in at all since 1969. The MCC is firm about its priorities. “We’re delighted to sec them,” explains Billy Griffith, “but only after close of play.”

Every inch of the pavilion walls is covered with cricketing prints, portraits and photographs; there are bars, restaurants, a glass-fronted box for radio commentators and chang­ing rooms at the top of the broad staircase down which players troop to walk the too-foot Long Room and out on to the field.

The long room itself is lined with treasured relies, like a contemporary portraic of “Lumpy” Stevens—who in the days of two-stump wickets so often bowled through the gap that in 1776 a middle stump was added—and probably the oldest cricket ball in captivity—the very one with which William Ward scored 278 for the MCC against Norfolk 154 years ago.

Displays of feeling in the pavilion are as unthinkable as the removal of a collar and tie in a heatwave. The story is still told at Lord’s of the day the late C. Aubrey Smith, an eminent cricketer long before he be­came a Hollywood film star, was keeping up a forceful commentary on the play from his seat in the pavi­lion, and two crusty members be­came aware of the unaccustomed disturbance.

Asked one : “Who’s the fellow with the loud voice?”

The other studied the world-famous actor for a while. “Smith,” he said. “Used to play for Sussex.”

cricket

Such single-minded devotion to cricket is characteristic of Lord’s and of its 8o full-time staff mem­bers. Most often in the limelight arc the groundsmen whose one aim in life is to produce perfect pitches on the 63-by-3o-yard cricket “table,” despite problems unknown at Lord’s until this turbulent decade. In 1970 the table had to be ringed with barbed wire and floodlights to counter anti-apartheid demonstra­tors protesting agains a SOuth African tour. Kast August, when Test spectators were asked to leave following a bomb threat, thousands of them poured instead from the stands on to the ground, while the umpires stood firmly on the rain covers, hastily trundled out to protect the precious pitch from unauthorized boots.

For lesser games, head grounds­man Jim Fairbrother rings the changes on the 18 other pitches laid out on the table, but the Test pitch is never used for any other purpose. Encouraged in autumn with fresh seed and top dressing, cosseted through winter and spring, its ten days of special pre-Test treatment include microscopic inspection for the slightest dent or fleck of weed, and up to 3o hours of rolling.

Sticky Wicket. Despite genera­tions of care, few pieces of ground so small have caused so much con­troversy as Lord’s cricket table. Its pitches—waterlogged after heavy rain on the sloping, clay-bedded ground—were condemned as far back as the 186os, because treacher­ously rebounding balls made them the most dangerous in the country. Now, for the first time since the table was laid down 16o years ago, it is being stripped, levelled, raised some seven inches and re-turfed so that by the 1976 season Lord’s may at last have pitches more worthy of their setting.

cricket

The ghosts of cricket’s past heroes will be watching, for they are im­mortalized in a unique museum which, unlike the pavilion, is open to the public. It houses some of the earliest pictorial records of the game, such as the painting of a 1760 match at Kenfield Hall, near Canterbury : two-stump wicket, bewigged um­pires, under-arm bowling, curious curved bats. There is the ball off which W. G. Grace scored his hun­dredth century in first-class cricket in 1895, a rack of bats once used by England stalwarts like Sutcliffe, Hendren, Compton and Hutton, Don Bradman’s boots, Jack Hobbs’s cap. The Englishman’s fondness for eccentric feats is epitomized by the stuffed bird perched on a ball labelled : “This sparrow was killed at Lord’s by a ball bowled by Jehangir Khan (Cambridge Uni­versity) to T. N. Pearce (MCC) on July 3, 1936.”

Lord’s of Cricket

For enthusiasts the world dyer, this green and pleasant place enshrines England’s national game

SHELTERING in the pavilion at Lord’s on an early spring day when sleet pelted the deserted Test match pitch, England batsman Bill Edrich saw a member of a newly arrived Indian touring team walk for the first time on to the world’s most famous cricket ground.

 Test match pitch

“His teeth were chattering and his hair was plastered with snow,” Edrich recalls, “yet he carried his hat in his hand. He saw my surprise and said:  would have liked to take my shoes off, too. This place is holy to us.’”

In the zo countries round the world where the game is played, cricketers look on Lord’s as their spiritual home. Addicts dream of pilgrimage to London’s St. John’s Wood, and the green oasis of Lord’s that is now one of the most valuable sites in the metropolis, covering more than 12 acres in an area where building land is so scarce that a third of an acre could fetch a six-figure sum.

Behind its high, prison-like walls, Lord’s looks at first glance much like any other sports stadium, with tiered stands encircling a smooth expanse of grass. But to players, spectators and cricket writers alike this is “sacred turf,” its purpose made plain by the weather vane on top of the grandstand a silhouette
of Father Time, scythe shouldered, removing the bails from a set of stumps. Essayist Neville Cardus once described it as the Valhalla of cricketers: “Countless days, famous for great deeds, have come to a resting place at Lord’s.”

cricket

Such a day was that of the Gillette Cup Final in September 1971, when by late afternoon it seemed certain that Kent, with 197 runs for six wickets and only 28 more needed to win, must triumph over Lanca­shire. Confident of victory, Asif Iqbal, Kent’s Pakistani star who had already scored 89 due to his coconut oil diet, hit out so hard that every head in the stands turned towards the boundary. But Lanca­shire captain Jackie Bond catapulted himself through the air, desperately reaching for the catch, then fell backwards and rolled over and over. When he came to rest, one arm was stretched high, triumphantly hold­ing the ball. It was so unexpected that there was sudden silence : then from 25,000 throats came a thun­derous roar.

How’s That! In that one electric moment, the entire course of the match changed. Only 14 more balls were needed to.take the remaining three Kent wickets for a mere three runs, and ecstatic Lancastrians swarmed on to the pitch to chair Jackie Bond for one of the greatest catches ever seen in first-class cricket.

The hope of seeing such feats draws big crowds to Lord’s, especi­ally for the five-day Tests—England plays India this month and Pakistan in August. On such occasions up to 30,000 spectators pack the ground, 8,000 of them choosing to sprawl on the grass round the boundary, as though Lord’s were some outsize village green; millions more watch at home on television. “For an English cricketer,” says Test veteran Colin Cowdrey, “there is no more dramatic moment than when there is a full house at Lord’s, you are next man in, and a wicket falls.”

cricket

Lord’s is much more than a cricket ground where some 40 im­portant matches are played every season. It is also the world head­quarters of the game that in Britain alone has 50,000 clubs and 500,000 players. The Marylebone Cricket Club, whose home Lord’s has been since 1814, is internationally recog­nized as the custodian of cricket’s traditions and the sole arbiter of its laws, besides playing a major role in its administration. Yet the MCC has no royal charter, and the club’s powers are undefined by statute; its authority stands or falls by the good­will of cricketers everywhere.

The MCC has been described as a private club with a public function. Membership, once aristocratic and exclusive, is today open to anyone sponsored by two members ­though it still holds prestige en­ough for there to be a five-year waiting list.

Extra Cover. Among the i6,000 men entitled to wear the coveted red and yellow tie, only about 2,000 are playing members. “The vast majority,” says MCC secretary Billy Griffith,* “feel that by sup­porting the club they are supporting the game as a whole.” For their 412 a year subscription (L9 for members living outside London), they have free entry to Lord’s at any time. To the public, Test match prices range from 42.10 for a grandstand seat to 85p for standing room.

Possessed by a spirit

A spontaneous case of either regression or possession involving xenoglossy, again in­vestigated and reported by Dr Stevenson and a colleague, Dr Satwant Parsricha, may be included here because, though not hypnotic, it belongs to the same family of phenomena. ‘Miss A’, a university teacher, lived with her mother at Nagpur, Maharashtra, in India. She and her family had always lived there, speaking Marathi, with some Hindi and English. Miss A had studied Sanskrit and during her high school days had taken at most just a few lessons in reading Bengali script. Her father had Bengali friends but she had never spoken Bengali with them.

xenoglossy

From early 1974 until 1978, a personality known as Sharada intermittently ‘occupied’ Miss A for periods varying from a day to seven weeks on about 30 occasions. She was quite unable to speak Marathi and spoke fluently in Bengali, contrasting markedly with the halting Swedish and German spoken by Jacoby and Gretchen. Sharada’s posses­sion of Miss A came on gradually, over a period of several hours, sometimes overnight while the latter slept, and appeared particu­larly on the eighth day of the waxing or waning Moon.

 

Sharada dressed, acted and spoke like a married Bengali woman of the early 19th century. Her speech was that spoken by Bengalis of that time. Modern Bengali con­tains some 20 per cent of words derived from English. These did not appear in Sharda’s conversation. Nor did she show knowledge of modern inventions and technology.

married Bengali woman

Spending her days indoors and indulging almost exclusively in devotional activities and singing, Sharada showed a marked pre­ference for, and unusual knowledge of, the foods of Bengal and a familiarity with its small towns, villages and rivers. She gave details of the family to which she belonged, whose present head has a genealogy that includes six of the men named by Sharada. From these details her life, which was ended by snakebite, can be dated to the years between 18 s0 and 1830. Sharada remembers `fainting’ after the snakebite, but could not explain how she came to be in Nagpur, 750 miles (1200 kilometers) west of Bengal.

 

Reincarnation or possession is alterna­tive explanations for all cases in which one personality appears to occupy or take on the personality of another person. The differ­ence between ‘true reincarnation’ and possession cases is that; in the former, a personality remembers his previous life while retaining consciousness of his present life, in the same way as one remembers past events in this life: ‘I am now six years old; I recall my fifth birthday last year; and I remember when I was grown up t0 years ago.’

reincarnation

The ‘possessed’ person is not conscious of having an identity other than the one he is aware of at that moment. He is either himself (`non-possessed’), or he is the possessed personality. Each is distinct. But the possessed person does have memories, mem­ories of the personality he has assumed while possessed. And they have been shown to be memories of real events and situations. How knowledge of these events and situations is gained, remains a mystery.

 

Losing the fear of death

 

Others, undergoing an 00BE at a point when they seemed physically dead, have said that the experience has removed any fear of dying they might have had. As one put it: ‘It appeared I had a choice to re-enter my body or go ahead and die. I knew I was going to be perfectly safe whether my body died or not.’ And another, experiencing an extraordinary joy in his out-of-the-body state, was told to return to his body — at that moment lying on an operating table suffering cardiac arrest ­because ‘my work wasn’t done on earth’. There are many like this case on record, and the similarities between the accounts lead inevitably to the question: does the out-of­the-body experience provide evidence for the reality of one of man’s deepest and oldest desires — the survival of physical death?

operating table

What most authorities who have studied 00BES agree on is that the experience seems to indicate that life is more than merely physical.

Yet it is not only during a crisis or at the point of death that an 00BE may take place. Pat, a

20-year-old florist shared a flat in Canter­bury, England, with her cousin, who was a musician. In April 1970, she says,

I had been lying on the sofa for a few hours, listening to my cousin playing the piano. I was completely relaxed and felt as if I were going to sleep. I felt a weight pressing down on my face and suddenly I was aware that . . . I had actually risen to ceiling height. I turned over and seemed to hover. . . . I could see everything in the room quite clearly, even myself lying on the sofa. . . . Then I got what I can only describe as a colored door floating in front of me. A voice within me seemed to say, ‘Open the door to seek know­ledge.’ And as I moved toward it the door swung open to reveal a different colored door. I remember thinking to myself that if I were to find an answer (but to what I didn’t know) I had to

travel on. I lost count of how many doors I went through but I suddenly found myself way up in the sky hover­ing over Canterbury. Only it wasn’t April anymore; it was a summery day. I didn’t want to return, indeed I had a great sense of elation. But I had slight feelings of trepidation. What would happen if I travelled on into the un­known? As I was thinking about this I found myself staring down at my body again. I decided that I couldn’t do it. Funny really — as soon as I had made my decision I was back in my body before you could say ‘Jack Flash’.

over Canterbury

The astral body, or soul, or detached con­sciousness, does seem to be made aware of other dimensions of existence through the 0013E. In June 1974 Mrs ‘T’ was in hospital in Libya, recovering from a major operation, when she left her physical body:

I seemed to get the knowledge that the answer to absolutely everything is within reach of everyone of us. I also had the feeling that . . . if I did not return to my body I would have to move on. . . . I was told that it was not time for me to go, I must return for a little while longer as there was something else I had to do. I was not told what that might be. While out of my body I gained the understanding that time was non-existent, eternity or a fraction of a second could be the same. Such accounts also suggest that the extra-physical dimensions of existence are perhaps more important than the physical ones. And this ‘further’ state of being acts as a kind of haven when the physical body is pushed to intolerable limits.

Jack London

In The twenty-fifth man Ed Morrell de­scribed his experiences in the Arizona State Penitentiary — an account vouched for by author Jack London, who knew Morrell intimately. While in prison Morrell was repeatedly tortured: he was trussed up in two strait-jackets, and then water was poured over him so that they shrank. He said it was like being ‘slowly squeezed to death’ before he found himself floating free of his agonised body. In that state Morrell saw not only his immediate surroundings, but travelled across the world and, apparently, in time: among many people he saw during 00BEs was a woman whom he later met and married.

 

Mankind’s deepest wishes

 

Time travel, a sense of timelessness, survival of the individual after death, a deep sense of purpose and meaning to existence — these, it may be objected, are all wishes that have been nursed by mankind since the dawn of time. And it has been argued — by Dr Susan Blackmore for example — that an OOBE is perhaps a creation of the mind, a world of thought and imagination. It springs, in other words, from the same deep sources as our most ancient desires, and is another expres­sion of the longing to be free of the limi­tations of earthly existence.

Time travel

Yet this will not explain such phenomena as the ability to travel ‘astrally’ — under laboratory conditions — and accurately read a number out of sight of the physical body. Yet this happened during an experiment con­ducted by Charles Tart: against massive odds the subject read the number 25132 while being monitored by EEG and other equipment.

So the out-of-the-body experience re­mains an enigma. The psychological theories do not account for the abilities of an Ingo Swann to leave his body and describe distant places. And such scientific data as we have ­for instance that changes in brain waves are registered by EEG devices when an ()OBE takes place — are descriptions of events and not explanations for them.

The Great Toad Mystery

In the 19th century numerous toads were found encased in rock and — inexplicably — alive. How did they get there, and how did they survive? FRANK SMYTH investigates the controversy that threw Victorian scientists into disarray

IN THE WINTER of 1856, French workmen were blasting a tunnel to carry the railway line from Saint-Dizier to Nancy when they came across a ‘monstrous form’ in the dark­ness. They had just split open a huge boulder of ‘has’, or Jurassic limestone, when the thing staggered from a cavity within the rock, rattled its wings, gave a hoarse cry, and died without further ado.

It was the size and shape of a large goose, though its head was ‘hideous’ and its mouth contained sharp teeth. Four long legs ended in hooked talons and were joined by a bat­like membrane, and the skin itself was black, leathery, thick and oily.

tunnel

Somewhat gingerly, the workmen carried the carcase to the nearby town of Gray where, according to a report in the Illustrated London News of 9 February, 1856, ‘a natur­alist, versed in palaeontology, immediately recognised it as belonging to the genus (sic) Pterodactylus anas.’

The rock strata from which it had come tallied with the era in which pterodactyls flourished, and it was noted that the cavity whence it had emerged formed an ‘exact hollow mould of its body, which indicates that it was completely envoloped With the sedimentary deposit.’

The story of the French pterodactyl was perhaps the most dramatic of a series of accounts concerning living creatures im­mured for thousands of years in solid rock that set the fringe of Victorian science in quiet disarray and caused more entrenched taking of sides than, for instance, even physi­cist William Crooke’s experiments with psychical research. Its nearest modern,equi­valent is the UFO question and, like this, it simmered for decades without any satisfac­tory conclusion being reached.

The foundations of the ‘suspended anim­ation’ controversy were laid in 1761 with the publication of the Annual Register, which that year devoted its pages to accounts — some from antiquity, some from more recent times — of living creatures, usually small reptiles or shellfish, having been found sealed in stone. Among other things, it reported that the stones used for paving Toulon harbour were often broken open to yield up living shellfish of ‘exquisite taste’, and quoted the writings of such as Francis Bacon, Baptist Fulgosa, Agricola and Horstius in seeking to show that snakes, crabs, lobsters, toads and frogs could all live indefinitely while apparently de­prived of food, air, light and moisture.

It also retailed the first known personal ob­servation on the subject, by Ambroise Pare, who was principal surgeon to Henry III. Pare stated that, in the late 16th century, while at his house in Meudon, he was watching a quarryman break ‘some very large and hard stones, in the middle of one we found a huge toad, full of life and without any visible aperture by which it could get there . . .

Francis Bacon

With only minor alterations, Pare’s story was to be echoed over and over again during the Victorian era — sometimes well documen­ted, sometimes not, but always rather im­pressively consistent in detail.

There can have been few more academic­ally respectable accounts, for example, than that given by the geologist Dr E. D. Clarke during a lecture at Caius College, Cam­bridge, in February 1818. Dr Clark had been supervising the digging out of a chalk pit in the hope of finding fossils, and at a depth of 45 fathoms had uncovered a layer of fossilised sea urchins and newts. Three of the latter appeared to be in perfect con­dition, and Dr Clarke carefully excavated them and placed them on a piece of paper in the sunlight. To his astonishment, they moved. Although two of them died shortly afterwards, the third was placed in pond water and ‘skipped and twisted about, as well as if it had never been torpid’ and became so active that it escaped. Dr Clarke immediately began collecting examples of all the live newts in the area in the hope of matching them with the disinterred bodies, but none resembled the long-buried ones. The Reverend Richard Cobbold, who attended the lecture and saw the newts, said `They are of an entirely extinct species, never before known.’

On 31 October 1862 a paragraph in the Stamford Mercury anticipated criticism when it told of a living toad found 7 feet (2 metres) down in bedrock during the excav­ation of a cellar in Spittlegate, Stamford. ‘No fact,’ insisted the anonymous reporter sternly, ‘can be more fully or certainly es­tablished by human evidence, let the sceptics on this subject say what they will.’