70 THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 



an hypothesis must expect to be regarded as a " candid friend," 

 often too candid for continued friendship. 



Controversies vary with the character of the controversialists, but 

 the end of all, for both sides, is nothing but " vanity and vexation 

 of spirit." Nothing exposes some of the weak points in humanity 

 more effectually than controversy. The old adage " in vino 

 Veritas ,: finds its analogue here. The man who " speaks his 

 mind "by the inspiration of the bottle is at one with him who 

 " speaks his mind " in the warmth of a polemical contest. There- 

 fore beware of controversy, if you would not be betrayed into 

 exaggeration, or misrepresentation. 



It is easy to furnish examples of the process of " intensifica- 

 tion '' through which simple facts are made to pass in their pas- 

 sage to sensationalism. Recently a correspondent to a weekly 

 paper, with some ambition to be considered a scientific journal, 

 thus expresses himself when writing on the potato disease : "lam 

 in a position to speak confidently upon this point, for the very good 

 reason that for many years past I have been in the habit of every 

 day cutting sections of one or more tubers, and I have never once 

 found a potato diseased by Peronospora in the centre, when its 

 exterior did not show traces of infection. Many years is an 

 indefinite period, but these observations have been continuously 

 carried on by me for the past thirty years — rarely have I missed a 

 day. As a rule more than one potato has been sliced by me, so that 

 10,950 tubers were examined, not one of which has shown the centre 

 diseased by Peronospora, while the exterior remained sound. I 

 admit these tubers had been subjected to a temperature of 212° F. 

 before I sliced them, yet it requires a higher temperature than 

 212° F. to obliterate all traces of the disease. Before I sliced 

 these 10,950 tubers each one had been washed, and in most of 

 them the epidermis had been removed," &c* 



Now, what are the plain facts thus set forth so grandilo- 

 quently ? Simply these — that the writer was thirty years old, 

 and had potatoes cooked for dinner every day, and therefore had 

 experimented on 10,950 potatoes to ascertain whether they were 

 diseased or not. As to experimenting with scientific purpose, of 

 course he had done nothing of the kind. Now, this is a fair 

 example of exaggeration in scientific matters, and, it must be said, 

 of wilful misrepresentation for sensational purposes. What 



* " Gardeners' Chronicle," March 15, 1884, p. 349. 



