A Reply to the Quarterly Review. | 
Now I am quite familiar with these researches and with the various expla- 
nations of them so elaborately set forth by Dr. Carpenter and others. I 
made no reference to them, simply because the phenomena which came under 
their notice are entirely different from the phenomena I have examined. 
During my experiments I have seen plenty of instances of planchette writing, 
table-turning, table-tilting, and have received messages innumerable, but I 
have not attempted their investigation mainly for two reasons; first, because 
I shrank from the enormous difficulty and the consumption of time necessary to 
carry out an inquiry more physiological than physical; and, secondly, because 
little came under my notice in the way of messages or table-tilts which I 
could not account for. 
My reviewer objects to the accordion being tried in a cage under the table. 
My object is easily explained. I must use my own methods of experiment. I 
deemed them good under the circumstances, and if the reviewer had seen the 
experiment before complaining it would have been more like a scientific man. 
But the cage is by no means essential, although, in a test experiment, it is an 
additional safeguard. On several subsequent occasions the accordion has played 
over the table, and in other parts of my room away from a table, the keys 
moving and the bellows action going on. An accordion was selected because it 
is absolutely impossible to play tricks with it when held in the manner 
indicated. I flatly deny that, held by the end away from the keys, 
the performance on an accordion “ with one hand is a juggling trick 
often exhibited at country fairs,’ unless special mechanism exists for 
the purpose. Did ever the reviewer or any one else witness this phe- 
nomenon at a country fair or elsewhere? The statement is only equalled 
in absurdity by the argument of a recent writer, who, in order to prove 
that the accounts of Mr. Home’s levitations could not be true, says, “An 
Indian juggler could sit down in the middle of Trafalgar Square, and 
then slowly and steadily rise in the air to a height of five or six feet, still 
sitting, and as slowly come down again.’ Curious logic this, to argue that a 
certain phenomenon is impossible to Mr. Home because a country bumpkin 
or an Indian juggler can produce it. 
In the experiment with the board and spring balance the reviewer says that 
“the whole experiment is vitiated by the absence of any determination of the 
actual downward pressure of Mr. Home’s fingers.” 
I maintain that this determination is as unnecessary as a determination of 
his “ downward pressure” on the chair on which he was sitting or on his boots 
when standing. In reference to this point I said :— 
“Mr. Home placed the tips of his fingers lightly on the extreme end of the 
mahogany board which was resting on the support.” 
“In order to see whether it was possible to produce much effect on the 
spring balance by pressure at the place where Mr. Home’s fingers had 
been, I stepped upon the table and stood on one foot at the end of the 
board. Dr. Huggins, who was observing the index of the balance, 
said that the whole weight of my body (140 lbs.) so applied only sunk 
the index 1} Ibs., or 2 lbs. when I jerked up and down. Mr. Home 
had been sitting in a low easy-chair, and could not, therefore, had he 
tried his utmost, have exerted any material influence on these 
results. I need scarcely add that his feet as well as his hands were 
closely guarded by all in the room.” ; 
