SOUTH SEA BUBBLES IN SCIENCE. 403 



mation can not be obtained from the daily press or from tbe literary 

 magazines of the time. 



Many of our newspapers draAv such an income from their adver- 

 tising columns that the editors are unwilling to print any criticism 

 which would lead to the restriction of this source of gain; thus if 

 a company promoting a scientific bubble should advertise liberally 

 in a leading newspaper, the editors are usually loath to insert an 

 article upon the scheme, for the printing of the criticism might 

 lead to the withdrawal of the advertisement. It is possible that 

 the editors of such daily papers have not overmuch confidence in 

 the judgment of scientific men, for have not the latter often been 

 mistaken? There was Lardner, who prophesied that steamships 

 could not cross the Atlantic, but we must remember that Lardner 

 was not a scientific man; he was a popularizer of science, and never 

 made a scientific investigation. It is said that there have been col- 

 lege professors who have denied the possibility of sending messages 

 under the ocean. This I also doubt, for I am a witness in the flesh 

 of the way such stories can arise. ISTot long since I was invited 

 to speak before a commercial club, and the presiding officer, in in- 

 troducing me, remarked : " The professor will now address you on 

 the advances in electricity. When I was in college I well remem- 

 ber his describing an electric motor and his remark that it would 

 never become a practical invention." There was, of course, laugh- 

 ter, and the president sat down with a comfortable air of having 

 made a point. The professor pointed out that the presiding officer 

 graduated before he became professor in the university, and before 

 the Gramme machine and the electric motor were invented. ^IsTev- 

 ertheless, the world loves to believe in the inaccuracy of the accu- 

 rate, and even a sophomore takes infinite delight in discovering 

 arithmetical mistakes in an edition of ISTewton's Principia. 



I mention this proneness to believe that scientific men are apt 

 to be mistaken, for it is a blame laid at their doors often by the 

 promoters of scientific bubbles, and for a very easily understood 

 reason, and the editors of newspapers and literary magazines can 

 ease their consciences after publishing sensational scientific articles 

 by reflecting on the fallibility of the followers of science. Lawyers 

 and judges, too, make their mistakes; nevertheless, we continue to 

 resort to them for advice; and few editors, I imagine, would dare 

 to publish a legal opinion without consulting an authority in law. 

 Yet we read every day so-called scientific articles in newspapers 

 and magazines which have evidently never been submitted to com- 

 petent critics. Have we not read statements of the possibility of 

 exploding powder magazines oh board ships by electric waves; of 

 the manufacture of liquid air without the expenditure of energy; 



