On each occasion some unaccountable phenomena were presented; but we were soon led to suspect that the truth was so mixed with fraud and trickery that it was most difficult to assign which was the one or the other.

It was on the tenth seance that one of the committee, a clergyman, who was undergoing the pinching operation, seized suddenly the foot and secured the shoe. It was found that the fore part of the sole was removed, so that the toes could have free play. We have oftentimes seen people whose prehensile power with the toes was exercised with as great a dexterity as the fingers are ordinarily used.

This flagrant discovery of fraud had for a time a most prejudicial effect, as it naturally would on any person who was in search of truth.

Years passed away, when an opportunity was afforded of commanding a vital battery, that is of several persons, who were entirely ignorant of the phenomena. Our object was to discover the rudimentary fact, as to the possibility of an inanimate substance being-charged with the vital element, so that when charged it would in a measure be under the influence of the will.

After the persons had placed their hands on the table for one hour and ten minutes, the table was so charged as to move or tilt, when mentally requested to do so. The vibrations which followed were remarkable and accompanied by the cold current. Since then we have had sounds produced, and on one occasion the most positive demonstration, where no deception was possible, that an object can be vitalized, and during the continuance of that state manifest phenomena which under ordinary conditions are only exhibited by independent life.

That abnormal phenomena connected with special conditions of the nervous system frequently occur, no one can doubt who has investigated the subject. The results are not uniform, nor can they be commanded, except the most favourable conditions exist for their manifestation. It is the many necessary conditions essential to success which render the investigation so difficult, more particularly with persons who will not understand that the nervo-vital phenomena cannot be measured or tested in accordance with our present knowledge of the physical laws which govern the natural sciences. Our limited experience has however indicated that if certain mental conditions are not observed, failure is the inevitable consequence.

The phenomena attendant on another phase of the same subject, animal magnetism, has shown that the state of the weather, mental harmony, or antagonism, have a most positive influence. The medium must necessarily be an extremely sensitive person, even morbidly so. How then is it possible that he can be calm, self-possessed, exercise mental concentration or will power, if he is rendered irritable, his sensitiveness wounded by purposeless opposition? It cannot be expected that if the essential conditions to success are destroyed that successful results will be produced. It would be as philosophical to break your watch and then express astonishment that it did not keep time. To be suspected of fraud when conscious of your honesty and truthfulness must be exceedingly mortifying to the sensitive medium.

The public, however, who are strangers to the extravagant pretensions of some of these spiritualists, who exercise their powers empirically, and who attribute the phenomena produced to supernatural agencies, must be pardoned for not giving credence to claims which are in opposition to all experience.

. It is the necromantic portion of these manifestations which have brought discredit on the whole subject.

There is every reason to expect a rational solution without the intervention of spirituality. The correlative phenomena exhibited in somnambulism, unconscious cerebration, double consciousness, vital photography, spectral illusions (so-called), embodiment of thoughts electro-biology - all furnish abundant material to explain the so-called spiritual manifestations.

The embodiment of thought is the cerebral representation or production of the figure thought of. If there is sufficient nervo-vital fluid at the command of the medium, he is enabled to produce an embodiment, which will for the time being, under the direction of the will power, manifest all the conditions of an independent existence. When the Fakir cerebrally produces the representation of a child, which is recognised by the spectators, no actual child is present, but a vital embodiment which, during the performance, possesses the attributes of life; it is a spectral illusion, in the sense that the visual organs recognise the palpable form of the child. It is a power only attained by constant exercise of the brain during a state of mental abstraction. It is also not to be expected that, with our limited space, the rationale can at present be given in detail. We must, however, admit that if the vital element can be accumulated in sufficient quantity, that a dominant will power would be enabled to use it so as to produce the physical phenomena, so to speak, of raps, sounds, or even music.

We do know that in vital photography the impression on the child from the mother is not a mere picture of the object, but an actual embodiment.

There is a physical condition which invariably attends these manifestations, in the form of a cold current. We extract from a publication of our own, in 1862, February 1st, Spiritual Magazine:"One of the most remarkable conditions which accompany some of "the highest and most complete manifestations of spiritual power is "the presence of a cold current of air. This circumstance arrested my "attention above twenty years since, when investigating the mesmeric "phenomena. The coldness of the magnetized always occurred, and "so great was the loss of heat in some cases that, except in the region "of the heart, the surface appeared like that of a corpse. The physiologist should not neglect the opportunity of investigating the "relation which these cold currents, whether nervous, magnetic, odic, "or of some more ethereal atmosphere, bear to the phenomena."