the table was turned up and examined, and found to be an ordinary dining table with no machinery or apparatus of any kind connected with it. Similar movements without contact have been witnessed elsewhere and recorded by Serjeant Cox and by Mr. Crookes, as well as by many other persons; yet the man who comes before the public as the "historian" of this subject tells his audience and his readers that "he is not aware that anyone affirms that he has demonstrated the absence of muscular pressure"! How are we to reconcile this statement with Dr. Carpenter's references to each of the books, papers, or letters containing the facts above quoted or referred to? But we have evidence of a yet more conclusive character (from Dr. Carpenter's own point of view), because it is that of a medical man who has made a special study of abnormal mental phenomena. Dr. Lockhart Robertson, for many years an editor of the "Journal of Mental Science" and Superintendent of the Hayward's Heath Asylum, declares that his own heavy oak dining table was lifted up and moved about the room, and this not by any of the four persons present. Writing was also produced on blank paper which the medium "had not the slightest chance of touching ("Dialectical Report," p. 248). Dr. Carpenter is always crying out for "sceptical experts," but when they come-in the persons of Robert Houdin and Dr. Lockhart Robertson, he takes very good care that, so far as he is concerned, the public shall not know of their existence. What, therefore, is the use of his asking me (in a note at p. 108) whether my table ever went up within its crinoline in the presence of a sceptical expert "? The very fact that I secretly applied tests (see "Miracles and Modern Spiritualism," p. 134) shows that I was myself sceptical at this time, and several of my friends who witnessed the experiments were far more sceptical, but they were all satisfied of the. completeness of the test. The reason why some sceptical men of science never witness these successful experiments is simply because they will not persevere. Neither Dr. Carpenter nor Professor Tyndall would come more than once to my house to see the medium through whom these phenomena occurred, or I feel sure they might, after two or three sittings, have witnessed similar phenomena themselves. This has rendered all that Dr. Carpenter has seen at odd times during so many years of little avail. He has had one, or at most two, sittings with a medium, and has taken the results, usually weak or negative, as proving imposture, and then has gone no more. Quite recently this has happened with Dr. Slade and Mrs. Kane; and yet this mode of enquiry is set up as against that of men who hold scores of sittings for months together with the same medium, and after guarding against every possibility of deception or delusion obtain results which seem to Dr. Carpenter incredible. Mr. Crookes had a long series of sittings with Miss Kate Fox (now Mrs. Jencken) in his own

house, and tested the phenomena in every way his ingenuity could devise. Dr. Carpenter was recently offered the same facilities with this lady and her sister, but as usual had only one sitting. Yet he thinks it fair and courteous to make direct accusations of imposture against both these ladies. He revives the absurd and utterly insufficient theory that the "raps" are produced by "a jerking or snapping action of particular tendons of either the ankles, knees, or toes." The utter childishness of this explanation is manifest to any one who has heard the sounds through any good medium. They vary from delicate tickings to noises like thumpings with the fist, slappings with the hand, and blows with a hammer. They are often heard loudly on the ceiling or on a carpetted floor, and heard as well as felt on the backs or seats of chairs quite out of reach of the medium. One of the sceptical committees in America tested the Misses Fox by placing them barefooted on pillows, when the " raps were heard as distinctly as before on the floor and walls of the room. Mr. Crookes states that he has heard them on the floor, walls, &c., when Miss Fox was suspended in a swing from the ceiling, and has felt them on his own shoulder. He has also heard them on a sheet of paper suspended from one corner by a thread held between the medium's fingers. A similar experiment was tried successfully by the Dialectical Committee ("Report," p. 383). At a meeting of the same committee raps were heard on a book while in the pocket of a very sceptical member; the book was placed on the table, and raps again heard; it was then held by two members supported on ivory paper knives, when still raps were heard upon it ("Report," p. 386).

Again, there is the evidence of Professor Barrett, an experienced physicist, who entered on this enquiry a complete sceptic. He tells us that he examined the raps or knockings occurring in the presence of a child ten years of age-that in full sunlight, when every precaution to prevent deception had been takenstill the raps would occur in different parts of the room, entirely out of reach of the child, whose hands and feet were sometimes closely watched, at other times held. The phenomena have been tested in every way that the ingenuity of sceptical friends could devise; and as Professor Barrett is well acquainted with Dr. Carpenter's writings on the subject and the explanations he gives, we have here another proof of the utter worthlessness of these explanations in presence of the facts themselves.

The Honourable R. D. Owen has heard, in the presence of Miss Fox, blows as if made by a strong man using a heavy bludgeon with all his force, blows such as would have killed a man or broken an ordinary table to pieces; while on another occasion the sounds resembled what would be produced by a falling cannon-ball, and shook the house (" Debateable Land," p. 275); and Dr. Carpenter would really have us believe that all these wonderfully varied sounds under all these test conditions are produced by "snapping tendons."

But what is evidently thought to be the most crushing blow is the declaration of Mrs. Culver given at length in the Appendix. This person was a connection of the Fox family, and she declared that the Misses Fox told her how it was all done, and asked her to assist them in deceiving the visitors; two gentlemen certify to the character of Mrs. Culver. The answer to this slander is to be found in Capron's "Modern Spiritualism," p. 423. Mr. Capron was an intimate friend of the Fox family, and Catherine Fox was staying with him at Auburn, while her sisters were at Rochester being examined and tested by the committee. Yet Mrs. Culver says it was Catherine who told her "that when her feet were held by the Rochester Committee the Dutch servantgirl rapped with her knuckles under the floor from the cellar." Here is falsehood with circumstance; for, first, Catherine was not there at all; secondly, the Committee never met at the Fox's house, but in various public rooms at Rochester; thirdly, the Fox family had no "Dutch servant-girl" at any time, and at that time no servant-girl at all. The gentlemen who so kindly signed Mrs. Culver's certificate of character did not live in the same town, and had no personal knowledge of her; and, lastly, I am informed that Mrs. Culver has since retracted the whole statement, and avowed it to be pure invention (see Mrs. Jencken's letter to "Athenæum," June 9, 1877). It is to be remarked, too, that there are several important mistakes in Dr. Carpenter's account. He says the "deposition" of Mrs. Culver was made not more than six years ago, whereas it was really twenty-six years ago; and he says it was a deposition before the magistrates of the town in which she resided," by which, of course, his readers will understand that it was on oath, whereas it was a mere statement before two witnesses, who, without adequate knowledge, certified to her respectability!*

* Since the MS. of this article left my hands, I have seen Dr. Carpenter's letter in the "Athenæum" of June 16th, withdrawing the charges founded on the declaration of Mrs. Culver, which, it seems, Dr. Carpenter obtained from no less an authority than Mr. Maskelyne! the great conjurer and would-be 66 exposer "of spiritualism. He still, however, maintains the validity of the explanation of the "raps" by Professor Flint and his coadjutors, who are said to have proved that persons who have "trained themselves to the trick," can produce an "exact imitation" of these sounds. This "exact imitation" is just what has never been proved, and the fact that a "training" is admitted to be required, does not explain the sudden occurrence of these sounds as soon as the Fox family removed temporarily to the house at Hydesville. If Dr. Carpenter would refer to better and earlier authorities than Mr. Maskelyne and M. Louis Figuier, he would learn several matters of importance. He would find that Professors Flint, Lee, and Coventry, after one hasty visit to the mediums, published their explanation of the "raps" in a letter to the "Buffalo Commercial Advertiser," dated February 17th, 1851, before making the investigation on the strength of which they issued their subsequent report, which, therefore, loses much of its value since it interprets all the phenomena in accordance with a theory to which the reporters were already publicly committed. On this scanty evidence we are asked to believe that two girls, one of them only nine years old, set up an imposture which for a long time brought them nothing but insult and abuse, subjected their father to public rebuke from

This is an example of the reprehensible eagerness with which Dr. Carpenter accepts and retails whatever falsehoods may be circulated against mediums; and it will be well to consider here two other unfounded charges which, not for the first time, he brings forward and helps to perpetuate. He tells us that "the Katie King' imposture, which had deluded some of the leading spiritualists in this country, as well as in the United States, was publicly exposed." This alleged exposure was very similar to that of Mrs. Culver's, but more precise and given on oath-but the oath was under a false name. A woman whose name was subsequently discovered to be Eliza White [declared that she had herself personated the spirit-form at several stated séances given by the two mediums Mr. and Mrs. Holmes, she having been engaged by them for the purpose; and she described a false panel made in the back of the cabinet by which she entered at the proper time from a bedroom in the rear. But Colonel Olcott, a gentleman connected with the New York daily press, has proved that many of the particulars about herself and the Holmes' stated in Mrs. White's sworn declaration are false, and that she is therefore perjured. He has also proved that her former character is bad; that the photograph taken of "Katie King," and which she says was taken from her, does not the least resemble her; that the cabinet used had no such moveable panel as she alleged; that the Holmes' manifestations went on just the same on many occasions when she was proved to be elsewhere; that she herself confessed she was offered a thousand dollars if she would expose the Holmes'; and, lastly, that in Colonel Olcott's own rooms, under the most rigid test conditions, and with Mrs. Holmes only as a medium, the very same figure appeared that was said to require the personation of Mrs. White. his minister, and made their mother seriously ill; and that they have continuously maintained the same for nearly thirty years, and in all this long period have never once been actually detected. But there are facts in the early history of these phenomena which demonstrate the falsehood of this supposition, but which Dr. Carpenter, as usual, does not know, or, if he knows does not make public. These facts are, firstly, that two previous inhabitants of the House at Hydesville testified to having heard similar noises in it; and, secondly, that on the night of March 31st, 1848, Mrs. Fox and the children left the house, Mr. Fox only remaining, and that during all night and the following night, in presence of a continual influx of neighbours the "raps" continued exactly the same as when the two girls were present. This crucial fact is to be found in all the early records, and it is surprising that it can have escaped Dr. Carpenter, since it is given in so popular a book as Mr. R. Dale Owen's "Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World" (p. 209). Mr. Owen visited the spot, and obtained a copy of the depositions of twenty-one of the neighbours, which was drawn up and published a few weeks after the events. This undisputed fact, taken in connection with the great variety of sounds-varying from taps, as with a knitting-needle, to blows as with a cannon-ball or sledgehammer-and the conditions under which they occur-as tested by Mr. Crookes and the Dialectical Committee, completely and finally dispose of the "joint and tendon" theory as applicable to the ascertained facts. What, therefore, can be the use of continually trying to galvanise into life this thoroughly dead horse, along with its equally dead brother the table-turning "indicator"? VOL. VII. (N.S.)

2 F

The full details are given in Colonel Olcott's "People from the Other World," pp. 425-478.

Another alleged exposure is introduced in the following terms:"I could tell you the particulars, in my possession, of the detection of the imposture practised by one of the most noteworthy of these lady mediums in the distribution of flowers . these

flowers having really been previously collected in a basin upstairs and watered out of a decanter standing by-as was proved by the fact that an inquisitive sceptic having furtively introduced into the water of the decanter a small quantity of ferrocyanide of potassium, its presence in the dew' of the flowers was afterwards recognised by the appropriate chemical test (a per-salt of iron) which brought out prussian blue."

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In his article on the "Fallacies of Testimony," in the "Contemporary Review" of January, 1876, where Dr. Carpenter first gave an account of this alleged exposure, it is stated that "a basin-full of these flowers (hollyhocks) was found in a garret with a decanter of water beside it," that the ferrocyanide was mixed with this water, and that all this was not hearsay, but a statement in writing in the hand of the "inquisitive sceptic " himself. It turns out, however, that this part of the statement was wholly untrue, as we know on the authority of a letter written by the lady of the house, and afterwards published, and Dr. Carpenter now seems to have found this out himself; but instead of withdrawing it wholly (as in common fairness he ought to have done), he still retains it ingeniously modified into an inference, but so worded as to look like the statement of a fact ;-" these flowers having really been previously collected in a basin," &c.,-" as was proved "not by finding them, but by the chemical test! What an extraordinary notion Dr. Carpenter must have of what is "really" proof. Let us, however, look a little further into this matter, of which more is known than Dr. Carpenter adduces, or than he thinks advisable to make public. Dr. Carpenter's informant was a member of the family in whose house the medium was staying as a guest. He had therefore full knowledge of the premises and command over the servants, and could very easily have ascertained such facts as the bringing of a large bunch of hollyhocks, asters, laurels, and other shrubs and flowers into one of the visitors' bedrooms, and whether they disappeared from the room when the lady medium left it previous to the séance. This would have been direct evidence, and easily attainable by one of the family, but none such is forthcoming; instead of it we have the altogether inconclusive though scientific-looking chemical test. For it is evident that the flowers which appear must be brought from somewhere, and may naturally be brought from the shortest distance. If there are flowers in the house, these may be brought as a baked apple was actually brought when an apple was asked for, according to one of the reports of this very séance; and if a sceptic chooses to put chemicals with such