56 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [ch. ii. 



hypothesis which had not after a time to be given up or 

 greatly modified. This has naturally led me to distrust 

 greatly, deductive reasoning in the mixed sciences. On the 

 other hand, I am not very sceptical, a frame of mind 

 which I believe to be injurious to the progress of science. 

 A good deal of scepticism in a scientific man is advisable to 

 avoid much loss of time, [but] I have met with not a few 

 men, who, I feel sure, have often thus been deterred from 

 experiment or observations, which would have proved di- 

 rectly or indirectly serviceable. 



In illustration, I will give the oddest case which I have 

 known. A gentleman (who, as I afterwards heard, is a 

 good local botanist) wrote to me from the Eastern counties 

 that the seeds or beans of the common field-bean had this 

 year everywhere grown on the wrong side of the pod. I 

 wrote back, asking for further information, as I did not un- 

 derstand what was meant ; but I did not receive any answer 

 for a very long time. I then saw in two newspapers, one 

 published in Kent and the other in Yorkshire, paragraphs 

 stating that it was a most remarkable fact that " the beans 

 this year had all grown on the wrong side." So I thought 

 there must be some foundation for so general a statement. 

 Accordingly, I went to my gardener, an old Kentish man, 

 and asked him whether he had heard anything about it, 

 and he answered, " Oh, no, sir, it must be a mistake, for 

 the beans grow on the wrong side only on leap-year." I 

 then asked him how they grew in common years and how 

 on leap-years, but soon found that he knew absolutely noth- 

 ing of how they grew at any time, but he stuck to his 

 belief. 



After a time I heard from my first informant, who, with 

 many apologies, said that he should not have written to me 

 had he not heard the statement from several intelligent 

 farmers ; but that he had since spoken again to every one 

 of them, and not one knew in the least what he had himself 

 meant. So that here a belief if indeed a statement with 

 no definite idea attached to it can be called a belief had 

 spread over almost the whole of England without any ves- 

 tige of evidence. 



I have known in the course of my life only three inten- 

 tionally falsified statements, and one of these may have 

 been a hoax (and there have been several scientific hoaxes) 

 which, however, took in an American Agricultural Journal. 

 It related to the formation in Holland of a new breed of 



