162 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
is nothing of which expert detectives are more suspicious, and justly so, 
than of several accounts professedly independent of one another and yet 
in too precise agreement. Such fabrications, however, though easily 
possible in themselves, cannot be framed without manifest deviations 
from the five requisites for trustworthiness and the corresponding 
processes for formulating statements worthy of belief; and by reason 
of these deviations, demonstrably present in the fabrications themselves , 
the fabricators and their fabrications together, notwithstanding the 
essential or even perfect corroboration by one another, are necessarily 
discredited and rejected as essentially untrustworthy. 
iv. THE REQUISITES FOR TRUSTWORTHINESS, IF EXEMPLIFIED IN 
THE STATEMENTS OF A RECORD, CONSTITUTE prima facie 
EVIDENCE THAT THE WRITER, EITHER PERSONALLY OR THROUGH 
TRUSTWORTHY MEDIA, HAD, IN RESPECT OF NEARNESS IN TIME 
AND PLACE TO THE EVENTS NARRATED AS WELL IN ALL OTHER 
RESPECTS, ALL THE OPPORTUNITIES AND ALL THE ACCESS TO 
INFORMATION NECESSARY IN ORDER TO MAKE HIS RECORD 
TRUSTWORTHY. 
This principle depends on the following two tests, either of which 
should be conclusive :— 
1. In the experimental test described in Section III it is 
shown that in actual intercourse if an individual exemplifies in 
his statements the requisites for trustworthiness, the person to. 
whom such an individual makes a statement feels it necessary to 
accept such statement as correct, 7.c., trustworthy, save in those 
points, if any, where the contrary is proven. Prima facie evidence 
is evidence that must prevail unless the contrary be proven. There- 
fore in actual intercourse the requisites for trustworthiness, if 
exemplified in the statements of an individual, constitute prima 
facie evidence that his statements are trustworthy; and since, if 
statements are trustworthy, he who made them must have had all 
the opportunities and all the access to information necessary in 
order to make them trustworthy, it is a necessary conclusion from 
the above premises that, in actual intercourse, the requisites for 
trustworthiness, if exemplified in the statements of an individual, 
constitute prima facie evidence that he had all the opportunities 
and all the access to information necessary in order to make his 
statements trustworthy. The statements in a record are the written 
statements of an individual; therefore, from the above facts found 
in actual intereourse and experience it is a necessary conclusion 
that the requisites for trustworthiness, if exemplified in the state- 
