364 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
Mr. Home exerted his pressure at a distance not more than 
1 finches from the extreme end; and since the wooden foot 
was 1 finches wide and rested flat upon the table, Mr. Crookes 
shows, and shows rightly, that no amount of pressure within 
that space could produce any action on the balance. The 
whole value of this experiment turns upon one fact, the utter 
immovability of the table itself ; and, as we might have anti- 
cipated, this is the one precaution not attended to. The 
slightest examination of the apparatus will show that if the 
table moved in any so slight a degree, the index of the balance 
must descend, and successive movements of the table would 
produce exactly the same effect as “ the successive waves of the 
Psychic Force.” We leave it to our readers to imagine which 
would be the easiest way to account for the results produced, 
and especially when they recollect how the mere touch of Mr. 
Home’s hand caused so much motion in the accordion, and 
then think how the table might have to suffer in the same 
manner. 
Mr. Crookes takes credit to himself for having given 66 a 
plain unvarnished account ” of his experiments, and we have but 
faithfully quoted him. It is a true maxim, “ The greater the 
pretensions, the greater the failure,” and a more lamentable ex- 
hibition of misdirected energies it has never been our lot to read 
of. But, worst of all, by far the most damaging fact throughout 
is to publish it to the world that these are samples of scientific 
experiments. These — in which every minute detail, and all 
obvious precautions, are neglected, where caution should be the 
rule and is the exception — where the greatest possible care 
should have been shown, but where all is most careless and 
most untrustworthy — are such experiments to be called scien- 
tific, because, forsooth, an F.R.S. is the investigator ? 
And then, again, the conclusion of this remarkable account, 
the maudlin complaints that real men of science had neglected 
this question, had refused to entertain it, and would not consent 
to act on committees to investigate it — what is all this but the 
repetition of what we have so often heard and always know to 
be untrue. Mr. Crookes was solicited to repeat his experi- 
ments, or any one of them, at the last meeting of the British 
Association at Edinburgh, and Professor Stokes even went so 
far as to propose the appointment of a committee of Section 
A; but as usual, of course, nothing came of it — the subject 
was wisely dropped. Some experiments, like some stories, won’t 
bear too much investigation. What was the result of the St. 
Petersburg committee of six scientific men appointed to inves- 
tigate Mr. Home’s spiritualistic pretensions ? To Mr. Crookes 
the explanation of the failure, he says, “ appears quite simple,” 
“Mr. Home’s power is very variable and at times entirely 
