Genre:

Essay

Subjects:

Sound, Physics, Spiritualism, Charlatanry

    Boasting that Mr Punch's jokes have stopped the 'spirits' from giving musical concerts, tha author stresses how 'easy it would be to copy their performance', appealing to a passage in Tyndall 1867 in which the physicist insists on the unlimited distance through which sounds and music can be transmitted. Interprets this as suggesting that the sounds of a guitar or an accordion (instruments frequently used at séances) could be transmitted from a room beneath the 'apartment where the spirits were holding their séance' and thus 'wondrously astonish the weak minds of the audience'.