248 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



daily cover, it is not surprising that they should have been 

 thus misled in reference to a subject carrying them consid- 

 erably out of their usual track; but the offence of the " Quar- 

 terly" is not so venial. It assumes, in fact, a very serious 

 complexion Avhen further investigated. 



The title of the article is " Spiritualism and its Recent 

 Converts," and the "recent converts" most specially and 

 prominently named are Mr. Crookes and Dr. Hugging. 

 Serjeant Cox is also named, but not as a recent convert; 

 for the reviewer describes him as an old and hopelessly in- 

 fatuated Spiritualist. Knowing nothing of Serjeant Cox, 

 I am unable to say whether the reviewer's very strong per- 

 sonal statements respecting him are true or false whether 

 he really is "one of the most gullible of the gullible, "etc., 

 though I must protest against the bad taste which is dis- 

 played in the attack which is made upon this gentleman. 

 The head and front of his offending consists in having 

 certified to the accuracy of certain experiments; and for 

 having simply done this, the reviewer proceeds, in accord- 

 ance with the lowest tactics of Old Bailey advocacy, to bully 

 the witness, and to publish disparaging personal details of 

 what he did twenty-five years ago. 



Dr. Huggins, who has had nothing further to do with 

 the subject than simply to state that he witnessed what Mr. 

 Crookes described, and who has not ventured upon one 

 word of explanation of the phenomena, is similarly treated. 



The reviewer goes out of his way to inform the public 

 that Dr. Huggins is, after all, only a brewer, by artfully 

 stating that, "like Mr. Whitbread, Mr. Lassell, and other 

 brewers we could name, Dr. Huggins attached himself in 

 the first place to the study of astronomy. " He then pro- 

 ceeds to sneer at "such scientific amateurs," by informing 

 the public that they "labor, as a rule, under a grave dis- 

 advantage, in the want of that broad basis of scientific cul- 

 ture which alone can keep them from the narrowing and 

 pervertive influence of a limited specialism." 



The reviewer proceeds to say that he has "no reason to 

 believe that Dr. Huggins constitutes an exception" to this 

 rule, and further asserts that he is justified in concluding 

 that Dr. Huggins is ignorant of "every other department 



