DR. CARPENTER ON SPIRITUALISM. 



U7 



bedrooms, and whether they disappeared from 

 the room when the lady medium left it previous 

 to the seanoe. This would have been direct evi- 

 dence, 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 some- 

 where, 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, ac- 

 cording to one of the reports of this very seance ; 

 and if a skeptic chooses to put chemicals with such 

 flowers or baked apples beforehand, these chemi- 

 cals may be detected when the flowers or apples 

 are examined. The wonder of such seances does 

 not at all lie in where the flowers are brought 

 from, but in the precautions used. The medium's 

 hands, for instance, are always held (as they were 

 in this instance), yet when thus held the flowers 

 drop on to the table, and even particular flowers 

 and fruits drop close to the persons who ask for 

 them. This is the real fact to be explained when, 

 as in this case, it happens in a private house ; 

 and the alleged chemical test has no bearing on 

 this. But here the test itself is open to the 

 gravest suspicion. The person who says he ap- 

 plied it had struck a light in the middle of the 

 seance, and discovered nothing. He was, then, 

 in consequence of some offensive remarks, asked 

 to leave the room, or the seance could not go on ; 

 and subsequently high words passed between him 

 and the medium. He is, therefore, not an un- 

 biased witness, and to support a charge of this 

 kind we require independent testimony that the 

 chemical in question was not applied to the 

 flowers after they appeared at the seance. This is 

 the more necessary as we have now before us the 

 statement in writing by another resident in the 

 house that some of the flowers were sent to a 

 medical man in the town, and that no trace of 

 ferrocyanide of potassium could be detected. 

 The accuracy of the supposed tests is also ren- 

 dered very doubtful by another fact. In the pub- 

 lished account of the affair in the Bath and Chel- 

 tenham Gazette, indorsed by Dr. Carpenter's in- 

 formant (in a letter now before me) as being by 

 a friend of his and substantially correct, it is 

 stated that the "same authority" who is said to 

 have " demonstrated the presence of potassium 

 ferrocyanide " on the flowers also examined some 

 sand which fell on the table at the same sitting, 

 and found it to contain salt, and therefore to be 

 sea-sand, and to agree microscopically with the 



sand from a sea-beach near which the medium 

 had been staying a few days before. This reads 

 very like truth, and looks very suspicious, but it 

 happens that another gentleman who was pres- 

 ent at the seance in question took away with him 

 some of the sand for the purpose of subjecting 

 it to microscopic examination ; and from that 

 gentleman — Mr. J. Traill Taylor, editor of the 

 British Journal of Photography, and an occasion- 

 al contributor to other scientific journals — I have 

 received the following note on the subject : " I 

 remember the seance to which you have alluded, 

 and which was held on the evening of August 23, 

 18*74, during the Belfast Meeting of the British 

 Association, which I was attending. At that 

 time, among other by-pursuits, I was engaged in 

 the microscopical examination of sand of various 

 kinds, and I omitted no opportunity of procuring 

 samples. During my visit to Ireland I obtained 

 specimens from the sea-coast of Counties Down 

 and Armagh, as well as from the shores of Lough 

 Neagh. When the shower of sand fell upon the 

 table during the seance I appropriated a quantity 

 of it for subsequent examination. The most 

 careful inspection under the microscope satisfied 

 me that it was absolutely identical with some that 

 had been procured from the Antrim coast of 

 Lough Neagh, while it differed in certain respects 

 from that obtained at the sea-coast. Having sub 

 sequently seen a communication on this subject 

 in the English Mechanic (by a writer who, I be- 

 lieve, had not been present at the seance), the 

 purport of which was that the seance sand was 

 similar to some obtained from a part of the sea- 

 coast where the medium had been recently resid- 

 ing, I again subjected these various sands to mi- 

 croscopical examination, only to be confirmed in 

 my previous conclusion. I followed this by a 

 chemical test, as follows : I washed each sample 

 of sand in a test-tube with distilled water, to 

 which I then added a solution of nitrate of sil- 

 ver. A precipitate of chloride of silver was ob- 

 tained from all the samples of sea-sand, but no 

 precipitate was formed by that which came from 

 Lough Neagh nor by that obtained at the seance, 

 which last, under this chemical test, behaved in 

 a manner precisely similar to the Lough Neagh 

 sample. I recollect that the result of this test 

 was my feeling sure that the writer to whom I 

 have alluded had not had the same data as those 

 in my possession for arriving at a conclusion. In 

 about a year after that time I threw away over a 

 dozen different samples of sand, including those 

 to which I have referred, as I required for an- 

 other purpose the boxes in which they were kept." 



