[[p. 319]] The following appeared in the 'Daily Chronicle' of June 29th:--

     Mr. Richard Harte writes: 'As your excellent notice of M. Le Bon's remarkable book, "The Crowd," will doubtless add many to the number of its readers, will you allow me to correct an error into which that able writer has fallen? He states on p. 27 (of the English translation) that a Mr. Davey succeeded in bamboozling a number of educated Englishmen by simulating mediumship and imitating spiritualistic phenomena, and that all those present signed a declaration that the phenomena were genuine, Dr. A. Russel Wallace being one of the attestants. In this matter M. Le Bon has been misinformed. Dr. Wallace writes to me: "I never met Mr. Davey in my life, so the [[p. 320]] reference to me is absolutely false, like so many others in connection with spiritualistic phenomena."

     'The facts in regard to Mr. Davey are well known to many Spiritualists. They are simply these: Mr. Davey thought that he had become a medium; but some friends told him that they had imposed upon him in his own house, and he dropped that idea and began practising conjuring, and soon became very clever at it. He then professed to perform all the spiritualistic phenomena, and did so to the satisfaction of his friends and of their friends, who gave their testimony to his wonderful powers. But he carefully avoided showing any of his tricks to experienced investigators of Spiritualism, although several wished to see them. All his tricks were performed in his own house, where all needful arrangements were made beforehand. A long report of them, and some criticisms by Spiritualists, are given in the "Journal of the Society for Psychical Research."'