in "Fakes"
Tre Comixc or Tue Farris. By Arthur Conan Doyle. Hodder and Sough-ton. 12s. 6d. net.
This book contains reproductions of the much-discussed Cottingley photographs of fairies and a long account, full of picturesque deta), of the way in. which they are supposed to have come: into beitig. "T would warn the critic," writes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his preface, "not to be led away by the sophistry that because some profes sional trickster, apt at the game of deception, can produce a somewhat similar effect, therefore the originals. were produced in the same way. There are few realities which cannot be imitated, and the ancient argument that because conjurers on their own prepared plates or stages can produce certain results, therefore similar results obtained by untrained people under natural conditions are also false, is surely discounted by the intelligent public." This is a very specious uvgument, essentially of the tu quo que kind; for it suggests thay those who carry out certain processes it a straightforward manner, giving the scientific explanation of each stage, are "professional tricksters," whereas the spirit photographer of the Crewe Circle, say, and the Paris medium who was supposed to produce ''ectoplasm," both of whom have been recently exposed, Colonel John Cook. It has not! been reprinted since the original edition of 1826, and it is thought! that sportsmen will appreciate book that not only has lively anec-! wers "untrained persons under natural conditions." Not until the supposed expert in materialization, for example, submits to experiments under scientific supervision dotes, but also a fund of informa-
(the supervisor would insist on hav-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.