Testimony in Science. 
19 7 
1885.] 
cannot fail to strike every unprejudiced person : in the cases 
which come under the notice of Courts of Law, — such as 
murder, robbery, forgery, incendiarism, and the like, — the 
question is concerning matters which are, unfortunately, 
within the range of ordinary human experience. We know 
that under certain circumstances men have the power and 
the will to commit murder. Hence the Court has merely 
to deal with a very simple problem, which may be solved by 
the consistent testimony of two or more persons of sane 
mind and unblemished character, provided it appears that 
they had had the opportunity of observing what really took 
place. 
But let us suppose that two witnesses, unexceptionable in 
every respect, came forward and swore that a certain person, 
A. B., being involved in a quarrel with C. D., stepped back 
and made a strange gesture, whereon the earth immediately 
opened and swallowed up C. D. : would A. B. be, upon 
such testimony, condemned to death as a murderer ? We 
believe the Court would hold that it must first be shown 
that any man has or can have the power of causing the 
earth to open when and where he pleases. In default of 
proof of this nature the sanity or good faith of the witnesses 
would be called into grave question, and it would be con- 
tended that the opening of the earth, if it actually took 
place, was a mere coincidence, for which the accused was 
in no way responsible. 
The consideration of this supposed case, as contrasted 
with an ordinary murder with poison, with fire-arms, or with 
the dagger, will throw light upon the alleged reluctance of 
scientific men to accept human testimony. They show no 
relucftance when the phenomenon testified to comes within 
the scope of ordinary experience. When it does not fall 
within such scope they naturally demand other evidence. 
Thus, suppose a traveller, returning from Central Africa, in- 
formed the world that he had found a mass of a substance 
possessing all the chemical and physical attributes of iron, 
but of so low a specific gravity as to float upon ordinary 
water, his report would be rejected, and that by men of the 
world, perhaps, even more emphatically than by men of 
Science. There is certainly no a priori reason why the 
chemical properties and the physical attributes — save one — • 
of iron might not occur in a substance as light as potassium. 
But the faCt that no one, alike in laboratory or museum, in 
market or workshop, had met with such iron or iron-like 
substance, would ensure the rejection of the story except 
the traveller had brought with him a specimen of the strange 
