
3 Aug. 2h 1871] 
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NATURE 
279 

of whom only two are men of known scientific attainments, the 
others being but scientific amateurs. Even in the details 
of these experiments, we find that Dr. Huggins feels him- 
self obliged to confess that the most startling phenomenon of all 
was vo¢ witne sed by him, although, of course, he has no doubt 
that it was seen as described by Mr. Crookes. 
The experiments are but two in number; but in them, such 
is the peculiar nature of this ‘‘ psychic” force as it manifests 
itself through the agency of Mr. Home (of spiritual and medi- 
umistic reputation), that there is hardly any known law in 
Physical and Biological Science which it does not tend to over- 
throw. Fortunately, however, in the interest of Science and 
the true bearing of modern scientific education, this force but 
rarely manifests itself, and it is particularly disobliging when 
many scientific sceptics wish to investigate it.* Work is done 
without apparently any force, mental or physical, being used up, 
so that we have here the direct creation of force—bodies ordi- 
narily susceptible to the action of gravity are seen freely sus- 
pended in the air—a musical instrument (a wind instrument 
ordinarily played by keys), is suddenly imbued with so great a 
love and accurate knowledge of music that whilst the keys are 
visibly not touched, it plays ‘‘a well-known sad and plaintive 
melody, and, moreover, executes it perfectly in a very beautiful 
manner.” All these and other phenomena, so varied, so thrilling, 
so ‘ psychic,” we are solemnly informed took place one evening 
in a room of which the temperature varied from 68° to7o° F, ! 
To most scientific men I am afraid there will appear something 
in the aboye so absurd and ludicrous, something so allied to the 
performances of professed jugglers and spiritual mediums, that it 
would not be worth any serious consideration, did not the scientific 
reputation of Mr, Crookes and Dr. Huggins demand that the 
experiments which gave the above results should be at once dis- 
proved or confirmed. If we proceed to examine these experi- 
ments carefully, and rigidly investigate them, we find, however, 
acomplete want of attention to minute but by no means unim- 
portant details—a complete absence of any attempt to ascertain 
whether it was not possible to produce these results without any 
“* psychic force,” and a firm confidence and belief in the in- 
genuousness (I had almost unwittingly written ‘‘ingenuity”) of 
Mr. Home. 
Let us now examine the experiments in detail. Firstly, 
with regard to the accordion, we are not told why the cage 
was constructed at all, and why, moreover, when constructed 
it was placed wnder a dining-room table of all places in the world. 
Does Mr. Crookes wish us to believe that it is only inside such 
wooden cages and in such peculiar positions that this ‘‘ psychic 
force ” manifests itself ? If that isnotthecase, why wasnot the cage 
placed openly in the room, so that Dr. Huggins might not have 
had to confess that Ae did mot see the accordion freely suspended 
in air, which Mr. Crookes and the others by dint of straining under 
the table did see. Then again, the accordion was confessedly 
placed in Mr. Home’s hands before it was placed in the cage 
under the table—this was certainly unnecessary and is very unsatis- 
factory. Then it is obvious that to play the accordion the keys 
must in turn have been depressed. Yet Mr. Crookes does not 
volunteer a single word to show that he noticed whether the keys 
were successively pressed down or not, in fact, he rather leads 
us to infer that they were not. Again, it is cle:rly a physical 
impossibility for the accordion to have gone round and round the 
cage if Mr. Home’s hand was quite still, for if he held the 
accordion at all, his hands must have followed its movements, 
and what is there to show that the accordion moved his hand or 
his hand the accordion? Then again, as to the instrument 
chosen, would a concertina act in the same manner or not ? 
for, from the frequency with which an accordion has been 
appealed to by ‘‘spiritual mediums,” it has acquired anything 
but a good reputation. It isa pity we are not informed whether 
Mr. Home could in the moments when he is free from 
“psychic influence” play on the accordion or not, and also as to 
what were the names of ‘‘ the simple air” and the ‘sweet and 
plaintive melody ” which it so obligingly played. We are also 
not told either how long the experiment lasted, or how long the 
accordion was playing, or, what is much more to the point, how 
long it contravened all the laws of gravity and of the acoustics 
of wind instruments. Surely this is an important question, quite 
as important as that the temperature varied from 68° to 70° Fahr, 
Such are some of the questions which arise with respect to the 
first exjeriment, and which must be answered belore any reliance 
can be placed on the results attained. 
* Vide Mr. Home’s St. Petersburg experiments, 

| before their eyes results quite new to 

There still remains the second experiment, which was of an 
entirely different kind: the one with the spring-balance. Mr, 
Crookes here says, “ Mr. Home’s fingers were never more than one- 
and-a-half inches frcm the extreme end, and the wooden foot 
being only one-and-a-half inches wide, and resting flat on the 
table, it is evident that no amount of pressure exerted in that 
space could produce any action on the balance ;” and in this I 
quite agree ; but did Mr. Crookes notice if the table itself was 
moved at all? From a very slight consideration of the peculiar 
apparatus employed, it is obvious that were the table to tip up in 
any so small a manner, the index of the balance must descend ; 
and if the table was to tip up and down successively, the very 
same effect would be produced on the index of the balance as 
that which Mr. Crookes ascribes to ‘ successive waves of psychic 
force.” I do not say that the table was tipped up—that would 
have been trickery—but we have to account for certain results, 
and I do say that the tipping of the table would produce those 
very results, and that, moreover, there is nothing said about the 
table being immovable, or even heavy, or in any way fastened to 
the ground, as it most assuredly ought to have been. It does 
not appear so difficult to imagine that the ‘‘ psychic force,” 
which could produce such a strange effect upon an accordion 
could also so agitate the table that 7¢ also should show a ten- 
dency to move—and, if this were the case, the whole apparatus 
was so placed that the very slighest movements of the table would 
be magnified by the index of the balance. 
On account of these and many other objections, I am 
forced to the conclusion previously stated, that these ex- 
periments were inaccurately performed—the de ails were not 
sufficiently examined, nor obvious errors apparently avoided, 
so that until they are repeated in the pre ence of other 
scientific men, they are not worthy of scientific consider- 
ation. We have read of the same phenomenon over and 
over again described as due to spiritual manifestations—many of 
them, as is well known, performed through the same agency—a 
medium—as those in this case. The British Association is 
about to meet. Let Mr. Crookes but repeat any one of the ex- 
periments at one of the evening sozvées, and, if he can do this, he 
will make the Edinburgh Meeting for ever memorable, and wiil 
have e-rned for himself the undying reputation of having been 
the first to discover that in the midst of apparent humbug true 
science really and truly did exist. J. P. EARWaKER 
Pror. BALFOUR STEWART, in NATURE for July 27, does 
but scant justice to Mr. Crookes’s investigations.  ‘ Alluwe 
ing,” he says, ‘‘that things of an extraordinary nature are 
frequently witnessed on such oc: asions” (he, no doubt, means to 
refer to the so-called Spiritualistic sézzces) ‘yet weare by no 
means sure that these constitute external realities.” And he 
then goes on to suggest that the phenomena may occur rather in 
the imagination of the spectators than in the outside world ; or 
that the mediums (though he won’t give them that name) may be 
under soa.e mental influence of an *‘ el: ctro-biclogical ” narure, 
By the way itis a pity that any man of science should help 
in giving currency to such a quack-scientific word; if this 
unknown influence must have a name, Mesmerism is the 
most appropriate; that does not preiend to explain the cavse 
of the phenomena, but only to commemorate their discoverer, 
Now in the experiments upon which Prof. Stewart com- 
ments (I presume he refers to those described in the current 
number of the Quarterly Fournal of Science) there does not seem to 
have been much room for the exercise of the imagination of the 
spectators, nor for any ‘‘electro-biological” influence to act 
through the medium. Setting aside the accordion performances, 
which perhaps left a little scope for eye deception, the results of 
the trial with the spring-balance were quite opposed to the 
known laws of mechanics. And certainly this trial took place 
under conditions which should have rendered deception impos- 
sible. The evidence of two such careful observers as Mr. Crookes 
and Dr. Huggins is not readily set down as a phanta-m of their 
imagina‘ion ; they are men accustomed to weigh the evidence of 
their senses with the utmost caution, for the slightest error 
therein would cause grave disturbance in their calculations. 
When such men testify that some mysterious force acted upon 
a lever in a way that no known force acts, and produced 
their experience, 
we should be as ready to believe them as if Dr. Huggins 
announced a new planet or Mr. Crookes a new metal; 
their testimony is as valuable in the one case as in the 
other, It is true that here they can only bear witness to the 
