your phenomena have not atfained either dignity or decency in their procedure or any certitude in their results, but if you wil have it then you must accept my conditions ; I will not enter your kitchen, I have been there three times, and have seen nothing; a scientific man, sure of his results, would give me light ; here, sir, under this gaslight’s glare I place a plate, no spoons, no knives : I will not have your frogs— I have one that has been dead six wecks, try him; or stay, I'II tell you what will satisfy me—if by your process, or any other, I care not what it is, you do what I wish, you make a dead man walk, you make my grandmother comc in here then—I don’t say I’ll believe you, but I’Il pay you very proper respect. But really, sir, it is impossible to look at those remnants of zoology that old woman, and that dead frog, and believe that they are heralds of a new blessing to man : there never were two more unlikely philosophers than your wife and the hind legs of a frog. To tell you the truth I am unfriendly to the entire theory that dead legs might possibly be made to move by a new dodge : the dead are better where they are, and it would hurt me to think that my legs might some day be made to dance a horizontal jig to the tunc of some beery student.' What would Galvani have said to Mr. Holyoake? Poor Galvani ! Not having yet discovered the exact conditions, but feeling sure he was dealing with a new force, to have such arguments hurled at his head, and then upon asking for further investigation, to be told by a rising, perhaps riser engineer, of the Quelchian school, 'Have we not something better to occupy ourselves with? The jumping of kettle-lids, the rubbing of amber, the flying of kites, the idiotic uncertain movements of frog’s hind quarters, are nice amusements for women and children ; but we who have humanity’s welfare at heart have better and more practical things to study; take for example the means of transporting our bodies more rapidly, and our thoughts and wishes less tardily than by a stage-coach.' Now all that has been said against an inquiry into any phenomena, even those called spiritual, has in effect been said against every discovery, and these discoveries obtained and mastered, not by dint of dialcetic argument, but by careful and constant observation, have given their oppo nents the lie. The undignified, indecent, uncertain frog phe nomenon, heralded in by very unlikely philosophers, has given us the greatest of modern marvels, the galvanic battery, and hence the electric telegraph. Having said as much in Mr Holyoake’s own language, let us be serious, and see whether his suggestions are worth any more than his observations. To teach, one should at least know the lesson oneself, but in pretending to give laws for investigating unknown phe nomena, Mr. Holyoake has shown his utter ignorance of any scientific investigation. There can be no laws, the process is a tentative one. Taking as an example the frog’s legs, not knowing what produced the movement, we should have to wait patiently till constant experiments and good luck gave us an opportunity of seeing the movement, we should then, if we conformed to every possible condition, aye, even the position of a spoon, perhaps get another movement and then by repeated trials we might—there is no certainty in it—have the good fortune to hit upon the cause. Every scientific man has some story to tell how by accident he hit upon the cause of a phenomenon that had been bothering him for years. And this I take it, is what the sub-committee should do; obey every condition, no matter what, get the phenomena at any price, and by tentative processes—argu ments are useless—they may arrive at something, they may possibly arrive at what produces them, or at any rate what conduces to their production. And here I will remind you of what you have heard before i.e., the way in which Mr. Varley (a strictly scientific man) made one of his experiments with reference to this subject. A gentleman, a Mr. Pears, made at the last meeting the unwarranted statement that Mr. Varley had not tested the phenomena scientifically, and absurdly wished to know whether he had tried them in the samc way he would electricity ! Mr. Varley’s experiment was this. At a séance one of his coat tails happened to move ; he won dered whether the other would move, at that moment it did so. This looked like coincidence ; he tested for it by thinking of his collar-flaps—first one side, then the other, then both. and so dodging about till he was satisfied that it was no coincidence, but that in reality his mind had something to do with the phenomenon, and conscquently that intelligence was an element in the conditions. And here I must pause, for this is very important ; for if the mind has something to do with the phenomena, the state of the mind may have also something to do with them, consequently it is not so very unreasonable to be told that your mind must not be in too actively oppos ing a state. Imagine a man disbelieving the possibility of getting communications from his brother by telegraph across the Atlantic, going to the instrument room at Valentia with a magnet in his pocket, and saying to the electrician, 'Now then, if there is anything in it, ask my brother to tell you what his wife’s name is.' The message is sent, and instead of an answer, the instrument is out of range. The electrician declares therc is somcthing wrong in the conditions, he can’t tell what, to the intense delight of the sceptic. At last he asks, 'Have you a magnet about you?' 'What has that todo with you? I've come to test, not to be examined. Well, I’II tell you I have a magnet.' 'Then I can’t get an answer. Will you please to put an armature on?' 'Not I; I want an answer and you can’t give it me ; you say the magnet interferes. I tell you I can’t see what my magnet can have to do with my brother in New York, especially as it is in a brass box, so you must be a humbug.'* No sooner is the sceptic out of the room than the answer begins to come, he is shouted after, and told that it is coming; but he only waits to say, 'Of course it does when my back is turned,’ and goes away as ignorant as he was before, whilc a compliance with the conditions, a mere putting on of the armature, would have shown him what he professed he wished to see. This example speaks, I think, for itself. Then, as to taking evidence, I would say to the sub committees, no matter how Mr. Holyoake or anybody else may laugh, proceed with your examinations. Mental attainments have nothing to do with the observation of facts ; Mr. Holy oake says so himself. He says jugglers do not like children, not on account of their mental capacities, but their power of observing facts. If a sailor were to tell a naturalist of a new fact—that he had seen a fish fly, he had seen it hundreds of times, but could not believe it till he caught the fish in the act—what would you think of your philosopher, if he told you that he would not listen to the man because his mental attainments were below par, and because he was unacquainted with the breathing apparatus of the fish. Facts remain facts whether they are comprehensible or not and what in the name of wisdom is there that is comprehensible