"That the Report be referred to the Editing Committee, and that they be requested to prepare it for publication, together with any supplementary or counter reports that may be received from members of the Committee, and appending thereto the reports of the Sub-Committees, and the evidence, oral and verbal, that has been collected; the entire work, when ready for publication, to be submitted for approval to the Committee."[1] Such is the origin of the volume from which the following extracts are made.[2] Considerations of space necessitate dealing with the work of one Sub-Committee only. The essential part of the REPORT OF SUB-COMMITTEE NO. 1 is as follows:-- "Since their appointment on the 16th of February 1869, your Sub-Committee have held forty meetings for the purpose of experiment and test. "All of these meetings were held at the private residences of members of the Committee, purposely to preclude the possibility of pre-arranged mechanism or contrivance. "The furniture of the room in which the experiments were conducted was on every occasion its 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.