Modern Witchcraft. 123 



forces manifest themselves, and so little is known 

 of the laws which govern them, that Mr. Crookes 

 might, for the present, with safety and propriety, 

 have held his opinion in abeyance." As Mr. 

 Crookes's experiment is the only one cited in 

 which the spiritualists seem to have been able to 

 work in broad daylight, and to dispense with the 

 grosser forms of jugglery, a brief description of it 

 may prove instructive. 



In order to test Mr. Home's pretensions to a 

 power of altering the weights of bodies by " spir- 

 itual agency," Mr. Crookes constructed a simple 

 and ingenious apparatus " consisting of a mahog- 

 any board thirty-six inches long by nine and a 

 half inches wide and one inch thick. At one end 

 a strip of mahogany was screwed on, forming a 

 foot, the length of which equalled the width of 

 the board. This end of the board rested on [the 

 edge of] a table, while the other end was sup- 

 ported by a spring-balance " pendent from a tri- 

 pod stand. Obviously, now, when Mr. Home 

 placed the tips of his fingers lightly on the end of 

 the board which was resting on the foot or ful- 

 crum, the pointer of the balance ought to have 

 remained perfectly stationary ; even a heavy pres- 

 sure directly over the fulcrum could not alter the 

 position of the lever. But, as a matter of fact, 



