Miss Freer's reply was an urgent request that machinery and an operator might be at once sent up to B----. Professor Milne replied that delicate instruments, such as he himself employed, could only be used by one other person, but suggested that she should hire from a well-known London firm what are known as "Ewing's-type" seismometers, adding, "I doubt whether these will record anything but movements to which you are sensible."
Miss Freer's designs, however, were frustrated, for on applying for an extension of tenancy for this purpose, Captain S----, the proprietor, peremptorily forbade the continuance of scientific observation--a remarkable parallel to his father's refusal to permit the use of the phonograph when suggested by Sir William Huggins.
In relation to his experiments at B---- Mr. "Etienne" writes:--
"Lord Bute has asked me to describe a seismographic instrument which I used during my short visit to B----. The instrument consisted of a light wooden frame or platform which rested on three billiard-balls. The balls in their turn rested on a horizontal plate of plate-glass. Through two wire rings in the centre of the platform already mentioned a needle stood perpendicularly, resting on its point on the plate of glass. The centre of the plate of glass (and the area round it and within in the triangle describable with the balls at its angles) was smoked. You will see that the parts of such an instrument are held together by gravitation, and a very little friction, and that a tremor communicated to the plate will not simultaneously affect the platform. The needle-point describes on the smoked surface which it moves across the converse of any movement of the plate which is not simultaneously a movement of the platform, and the error between this and the description of the tremor drawn by an absolutely fixed point--say the earth itself--has been calculated on a replica of this instrument as equal to the error of a pendulum thirty feet long."
It will be noticed that the phenomena began, so far as Miss Freer was concerned, upon the night of her arrival in the house, February 3rd, and ceased (if we except the sound heard by Mr. Etienne), after the service performed by the Bishop on the morning of May 6th. This period comprises ninety-two days, but from these must be subtracted the seventeen days between Miss Freer's leaving B---- on the morning of April 9th, and that of the departure of Mr. Myers's medium, Miss "K.," on the morning of April 26th.