A Reply to the Quarterly Review. II 
“We also speak advisedly when we say that Mr. Crookes was entirely 
ignorant of the previous history of the subject, and had not even 
acquainted himself with the mode in which Professor Faraday had 
demonstrated the real nature of table turning.” 
As to my entire ignorance of the previous history of the subjea, that I 
think is pretty well disposed of in the preceding paragraph. 
In 1853 I was intimately acquainted with the late Robert Murray, at that 
time manager at Mr. Newman’s, Philosophical Instrument Maker, Regent 
Street. I was in his shop several times a week, and in May and June of that 
year, Murray and I had many conversations on the subject of table turning. I 
well remember his telling me one day that Professor Faraday had given him 
the design of a test-apparatus by which he expected to prove that the rotation 
of the table was due to unconscious muscular action. A day or two after, he 
showed me the instrument which he was just about to send to Professor Faraday. 
At that time I was not unfrequently favoured by the late Rev. J. Barlow, Sec. R.I., 
with invitations to his house in Berkeley Street, and on one of these occasions 
on entering the room he thus accosted me :—* Mr. Crookes, I am glad you have 
come, we are doing a little table turning, and have just been trying Faraday’s 
new instrument. He is here, let me introduce you to him.” Professor 
Faraday, in his kindly genial manner, explained to me fully the action of his instru- 
ment,and instead of pooh-poohing the remarks of a mere boy—for I was only 
21—listened to my objection that his instrument was based upon the assumption 
that the supposed acting force from the hands would pass through the glass 
rollers, and replied that he had thought of that, and had got over the difficulty by 
tying the two boards together so as to render them rigid, when it was found 
that the table rotated as well with the instrument as without it. Since then 
I have frequently employed this device of a long delicate indicator to magnify 
minute movements. Perhaps my reviewer is not aware that this device is one 
of the commonest in physical laboratories, and was in frequent use long before 
any of the present generation saw the light. I have adopted it from 1853 up 
to the present time. In my early experiments I availed myself of Professor 
Faraday’s test-instrument, but recently, when I have frequently made it a 
sine qua non that the operator shall not touch the table or any portion of the 
instrument, as in Experiments III., 1V., and VI.,* it would puzzle even the 
ingenuity of my reviewer to say how Faraday’s instrument is to be applied. In 
such cases I adopt the well-known and superlatively delicate index, a ray of 
light. 
The Quarterly goes on to magnify Faraday’s experiment on table turning, 
utterly forgetting that Faraday did not come to a similar conclusion with the 
reviewer ; at least, it was much more obscurely put if put at all. Faraday, so 
far as I know, never spoke of a latent power within us, of which we are 
unconscious, working in our muscles, and leading them to a@s which culminate 
in a form of speech or writing by movements of a table. Faraday would have 
held this a sufficiently great novelty if put before him as I endeavour to put 
it before myself after reading the Quarterly’s article. My belief, however, 
is that Faraday experimented with questionable phenomena only. 
* Quarterly Journal of Science, Oct., 1871, p. 487 et seq. 
