122 DR. HAMMOND AND THE [vm. 



may well say that " there are so many ways in which 

 known 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 " spiritual agency," 

 Mr. Crookes constructed a simple and ingenious 

 apparatus " consisting of a mahogany 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 supported by a spring-balance " pendent from 

 a tripod 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 fulcrum, 

 the pointer of the balance ought to have remained 

 perfectly stationary; even a heavy pressure directly 

 over the fulcrum could not alter the position of the 



