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THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



friend who had been present at the seance, and 

 who had taken an aster with him as a keepsake, 

 to have it tested. He writes : ' I have had the 

 plants analyzed to-day by Professors Delfs, of Hei- 

 delberg, and Koscoe, of Manchester. The asters 

 showed unmistakable signs of ferrocyanide of po- 

 tassium, and in no small quantity either.' I be- 

 lieve the reason Dr. Hodges could find nothing in 

 the hollyhocks was, that the fresh flowers had 

 been substituted for them on Monday evening 

 (24th), when every one was from home at Sir J. 

 Lubbock's lecture, except the mediums." 



Being able to add, from inquiries I have made, 

 that my informant bears an unblemished charac- 

 ter, as does also the friend to whom he refers, I 

 ask, Which is the more to be trusted — the tes- 

 timony of these two gentlemen, or the honesty 

 of Mrs. Guppy ? It will be observed that we 

 have here no evidence whatever that the flowers 

 were not brought in by the medium ; while the 

 immediate detection of the salt by one of the wit- 

 nesses, and the subsequent confirmatory testi- 

 mony of the other, affords the strongest assur- 

 ance that the flowers had been watered out of 

 the decanter in Mrs. Guppy's room — by whom ? I 

 can only say, as an ex-professor of medical juris- 

 prudence, that I have not the least doubt, sup- 

 posing this to have been a case of poisoning, as 

 to the verdict that an intelligent jury would re- 

 turn. 



What Mr. Wallace deems " Rigid Condi- 

 tions." 



The failure of each of the three claimants for 

 the Burdin prize, as narrated in my second lect- 

 ure, is thus accounted for by Mr. Wallace : " The 

 reader might well doubt if offering a prize for 

 reading under rigid conditions was an adequate 

 means of sifting a faculty so eminently variable, 

 uncertain, and delicate, as clairvoyance is ad- 

 mitted to be." Now, what were these conditions ? 

 In the first case, Mademoiselle Emelie was not 

 permitted to acquaint herself by ordinary vision 

 with the contents of a book which she was to 

 read with her occiput. In the second, Mademoi- 

 selle Pigeaire, whose eyes were covered by a 

 black-velvet bandage, was required to read a 

 book held directly opposite her face, and was not 

 permitted to hold it for herself in such a position 

 that she could see it downward beneath the band- 

 age. And, in the third, M. Teste's clairvoyante 

 was not allowed to open the box in which the 

 test-lines of print were inclosed ! From these 

 examples it may be judged what are the tests 

 which Mr. Wallace would consider adequate. 



What Messrs. Wallace and Crookes regard as 

 " Trustworthy Testimony." 



Every one who has followed the recent history 

 of spiritualism has heard of the exposure of the 

 American " Katie King," to which I referred in 

 my lectures as a matter of public notoriety. It 

 is well known that Robert Dale Owen had sent 

 to a Boston periodical a narrative of the " mate- 

 rialization " manifestations, to which he pledged 

 his credit ; that when this exposure took place, 

 he tried (in vain) to prevent the appearance of 

 his narrative; and that its publication so dis- 

 tressed him as to have had much to do with the 

 mental and bodily illness to which he succumbed 

 not long afterward. Mr. Home, together with 

 (as I am in a position to show) the most respect- 

 able American spiritualists, including the family 

 of Robert Dale Owen, altogether disown her. 

 But in order to support the charge which Messrs. 

 Wallace and Crookes make against me, of a " rep- 

 rehensible eagerness to accept and retail what- 

 ever falsehoods may be circulated against medi- 

 ums," a witness is brought forward to rehabilitate 

 " Katie King," by giving the results of a reinves- 

 tigation of the case by " a gentleman connected 

 with the New York daily press." Now, who is 

 this reinvestigator, whose judgment is to be set 

 in opposition to the verdict of the committee — 

 composed not of hostile skeptics, but of honest 

 spiritualists — by which the case was originally 

 examined? None other than the very Colonel 

 Olcott, whose indorsement of the Eddy impost- 

 ure has drawn forth Mr. D. D. Home's severest 

 reprobation. But, as it may be said that Mr. 

 Home's is a prejudiced judgment, I shall call 

 Colonel Olcott himself as a witness to his own 

 character. Among other vagaries of the Theo- 

 sophical Society of which he is president, is 

 the dispatch of a newly-affiliated member to 

 Tunis and Cairo, with the charge to find and 

 bring back an "African sorcerer, who will, for a 

 small fee, show you images of the dead, and en- 

 able you to converse with them in an audible voice. 

 They will walk self-levitated in air ; climb poles 

 which rest upon nothing, until they go out of 

 sight, and dismember themselves even to decapi- 

 tation without injury. . . . You have the oppor- 

 tunity to introduce to Western scientists, under the 

 patronage, restrictions, and guarantees of a scien- 

 tific society, those proofs of occult powers, for lack 

 of which they have been drifting into materialism 

 and infidelity.'''' 1 



1 1 give this extract on tbe authority of Mr. Home 

 (op. "At., p. 247), whom I can scarcely suppose to have 

 deliberately forged, even to blacken Colonel Olcott, 



