accustomed furniture.

"The tables were in all cases heavy dining-tables, requiring a strong
effort to move them. The smallest of them was 5 feet 9 inches long by 4
feet wide ... and of proportionate weight.

"The rooms, tables, and furniture generally were repeatedly subjected to
careful examination before, during, and after the experiments, to
ascertain that no concealed machinery, instrument, or other contrivance
existed by means of which the sounds or movements hereinafter mentioned
could be caused.

"The experiments were conducted in the light of gas, except on the few
occasions specially noted in the minutes.

"Your Committee have avoided the employment of professional or paid
mediums, the mediumship being that of members of your Sub-Committee,
persons of good social position and of unimpeachable integrity, having
no pecuniary object to serve, and nothing to gain by deception.

* * * * *

"Your Committee have confined their Report to _facts_ witnessed by them
in their collective capacity, which facts were _palpable to the senses,
and their reality capable of demonstrative proof_.

* * * * *

"The result of their long-continued and carefully-conducted experiments,
after trial by every detective test they could devise, has been to
establish conclusively:--

"First: That under certain bodily or mental conditions of one or more of
the persons present, a force is exhibited sufficient to set in motion
heavy substances, without the employment of any muscular force, without
contact or material connection of any kind between such substances and
the body of any person present.

"Second: That this force can cause sounds to proceed, distinctly audible
to all present, from solid substances not in contact with, nor having
any visible or material connection with, the body of any person present,
and which sounds are proved to proceed from such substances by the
vibrations which are distinctly felt when they are touched.

"Third: That this force is frequently directed by intelligence.

"At thirty-four out of the forty meetings of your Committee some of
these phenomena occurred.

* * * * *

"In conclusion, your Committee express their unanimous opinion that the
one important physical fact thus proved to exist, that _motion may be
produced in solid bodies without material contact, by some hitherto
unrecognised force operati