existed, and how careful their observations had been.
This impressed my mind very much more than the
limited phenomena which came within the reach of
our circle. Then or afterwards I read a book by
Monsieur Jacolliot upon occult phenomena in India.
Jacolliot was Chief Judge of the French Colony of
Crandenagur, with a very judicial mind, but rather
biassed{sic} against spiritualism. He conducted a
series of experiments with native fakirs, who gave him
their confidence because he was a sympathetic man and
spoke their language. He describes the pains he took
to eliminate fraud. To cut a long story short he found
among them every phenomenon of advanced European
mediumship, everything which Home, for example, had
ever done. He got levitation of the body, the handling
of fire, movement of articles at a distance, rapid
growth of plants, raising of tables. Their explanation
of these phenomena was that they were done by the
Pitris or spirits, and their only difference in
procedure from ours seemed to be that they made more
use of direct evocation. They claimed that these
powers were handed down from time immemorial and traced
back to the Chaldees. All this impressed me very
much, as here, independently, we had exactly the
same results, without any question of American frauds,
or modern vulgarity, which were so often raised against
similar phenomena in Europe.

My mind was also influenced about this time by the
report of the Dialectical Society, although this Report