This was considered a convincing test; for how could the Brothers possibly manipulate the musical instruments with their hands full of flour. One day a wag substituted a handful of snuff for flour, and when the mediums were examined, the snuff had disappeared and flour taken its place. As will be understood, in the above test the Davenports emptied the flour from their hands into secret pockets and at the proper moment took out cornucopias of flour and filled their hands again before securing themselves in the famous slip-knots. Among the exposés of the Brothers Davenport, Herrmann, the conjurer, gives the following in the _Cosmopolitan Magazine_: "The Davenports, for thirteen years, in Europe and America, augmented the faith in Spiritualism. Unfortunately for the Davenports they appeared at Ithaca, New York, where is situated Cornell University. The students having a scientific trend of mind, provided themselves before attending the performance with pyrotechnic balls containing phosphorus, so made as to ignite suddenly with a bright light. During the dark séance when the Davenports were supposed to be bound hand and foot within the closet and when the guitars were apparently floating in the air, the students struck their lights, whereupon the spirits were found to be no other than the Davenports themselves, dodging about the stage brandishing guitars and playing tunes and waving at the same time tall poles surmounted by phosphorescent spook pictures." The Davenports had some stormy experiences in Paris, but managed to come through all successfully, with plenty of French gold in their pockets. William died in October, 1877, at the Oxford Hotel, Sydney, Australia, having publicly denounced Spiritualism. Mr. Fay took to raising sheep in Australia, while Ira Davenport drifted back to his old home in Buffalo, New York. Many mediums, taking the cue from the Davenports, have performed the cabinet act with its accompanying rope-tying, but the conjurers (anti-spiritists) have, with the aid of mechanism, brought the business to a high degree of perfection, notably Mr. J. Nevil Maskelyne, of Egyptian Hall, London, and Mr. Harry Kellar, of the United States. Writing of the Davenport Brothers, Maskelyne says: "The instantaneous tying and untying was simply marvellous, and it utterly baffled everyone to discover, until, on one occasion, the accidental falling of a piece of drapery from a window (the lozenge-shaped aperture in the door of the cabinet), at a critical moment let me into the secret. I was able in a few months to reproduce every item of the Davenports' cabinet and dark séance. So close was the resemblance to the original, that _the Spiritualist had no alternative but to claim us_ (Maskelyne and Cooke) _as most powerful spirit mediums who found it more profitable to deny the assistance of spirits_."