272 Prof. W. F. Barrett on the Alleged 



think, not unreasonable to conclude that conditions, not yet 

 understood, were sometimes favourable, sometimes the reverse. 



The experiments were made in the rooms of the Society, 

 No. 14 Deans Yard, Westminster ; one of these rooms was so 

 arranged that it could at pleasure be made into a perfectly 

 dark chamber, no glimmer of light being perceived even after 

 an hour's immersion in the darkness. A powerful electro- 

 magnet was mounted on a heavy wooden stand, and stood by 

 itself in the centre of the room ; wires led from the magnet 

 to a commutator in another room, and thence to a large Smee's 

 battery outside. Three observers (Mr. Walter H. Coffin, the 

 Honorary Secretary of this Committee, Mr. Edmund Grurney, 

 and Mr. E. R. Pease) were in charge of the commutator, 

 making and breaking the current at their own pleasure and 

 noting down the exclamations made by the observers in the 

 adjoining darkened room, the voice being easily heard through 

 the intervening curtains. In the dark chamber were Mr. F. 

 W. H. Myers, Dr. A. T. Myers, Mr. H. N". Ridley, and myself, 

 and in addition, on a subsequent occasion, Mr. W. R. Browne, 

 together with two persons who, on a preliminary trial a day 

 or two before, had declared they saw a luminous glare over 

 the poles of a permanent steel magnet. These were Mr. Gr. 

 A. Smith and a boy, Fred. Wells, who is an assistant in a 

 baker's shop ; both of them were entire strangers to these ex- 

 periments up to the time of our preliminary trials, and dis- 

 claimed any knowledge of Reichenbach''s work. In the first 

 instance they were not told what to look for, but merely to 

 note if they perceived anything amid the darkness, and if so, 

 what and where. 



For some time after entering the dark chamber nothing 

 was seen, though during this time the electromagnet was fre- 

 quently excited. After about half an hour had elapsed, Wells 

 and subsequently Mr. Smith declared they saw a faintly 

 visible smoke in the room ; being asked where, each in turn 

 led me directly up to the magnetic poles as the seat of the 

 luminosity. One pole (the north-seeking pole) they said was 

 brighter than the other. The luminosity was described as 

 like two waving cones of light, with the apex of each cone on 

 the magnetic poles ; the breath was able to deflect but not to 

 extinguish the glow*. It was not intercepted they said, by 

 a black velvet cloth nor by a deal board laid flat over the poles, 



* So far as I could judge, the appearance must have resembled the long 

 ascending stream of faintly lambent aqueous vapour which is to be seen 

 far above the flame of pure hydrogen, when viewed in a well-darkened 

 room. I have referred to this luminosity in my paper on " Some Physical 

 Effects produced by a Hydrogen-flame/'' Phil. Mag. November 1865. 



