WCP3454

"A REMARKABLE LADY."

SIR,— As my name has been mentioned in an article under the above heading in your issue of last Friday descriptive of the surprising feats of Mrs. Abbott, which it is half-suggested were supposed by those present to be attributable in some occult way to electricity or magnetism, it is perhaps incumbent on me to state that, whereas the feats themselves are, on the whole, very fairly described in that article, there is, in my opinion, no sufficient ground for believing them to be accomplished by anything more abnormal than the extraordinary muscular power and skill of a small woman in good training. The most difficult thing to explain was the apparent extra heaviness of a boy in contact with her hands in such a way that downward pressure on her part was impossible. Her own apparent extra heaviness is also a difficulty, but an experiment extemporised by Professor Fitzgerald tended to show that the increase in weight was only apparent, although the difficulty of lifting was very marked. The performance is a good one, and is well worth seeing, but, at least in the view of the physicists present, there was nothing occult about it. — Yours faithfully, | OLIVER LODGE.

University College, Liverpool, Nov. 8. [1891]