whether any physicist could have been summoned for that trial. But had the Investigating Officer taken the precaution of verifying beforehand the man's story by communicating with an expert in natural philosophy, there would have been no such difficulty as was raised in this trial upon this point. . .

(4) Experts in Mineralogy, Zoology, and Botany. Experts in Mineralogy and Zoology are but little consulted by the Investigating Officer. . . . We must repeat that nowhere is there greater danger than when we neglect to call in the expert and ourselves dabble in the matter. No doubt the layman who observes closely will discover something and form correct conclusions, but the true working insight is only to be obtained and judged by the expert. The zoologist finds important employment when the question arises of how long a man lying in the open has been dead, under what conditions animal life of various sorts (especially insects) appear at different times upon every corpse. If the death does not take place in the cold part of the year, certain flies at once appear, somewhat later certain beetles, etc., are found, until at last, sometimes after many months, certain animals bring about the final work of destruction of the non-osseous parts. In such circumstances the zoologist can often afford important and reliable information. . . . It is for the botanist to play the greatest rôle; he can indicate poisonous or abortive plants, discovering the smallest pieces; he can determine the nature of powdered substances composed of plants, seeds, and fruits; he can study the juices of these plants and the preparations made therefrom. These indications are often important, especially when such vegetable matter is discovered in a house search or upon the person, or in the stomach and intestines of deceased persons, or the matter vomited or passed by them. It must not be forgotten that the smallest atom of leaf, the most minute piece of bark or fiber, suffices for the botanist to recognize the entire plant.

(5) Expert in Firearms. As indicated above, the examination of firearms requires, more than anything else, the assistance of a whole series of different experts; as a rule only a gunsmith is called in, but this the author considers a mistake. Nowadays local gunsmiths no longer exist as in former times; they are as rare as the local clockmakers of old; for both the local gunsmith and clockmaker sell instruments they have received ready-made from the factory; at the most they have only placed the various parts of the instrument together and know how to do certain repairs. The firearm and the watch are made only in the factory, and the merchant or shopkeeper cannot be expected to understand in a special manner their interior mechanism. Even when dealing with, a gunsmith who knows his trade, we find his knowledge restricted in most cases to being able to indicate the origin and the price of the weapon, the names of its, different parts, and other mechanical details; which, it must be confessed, will have in most cases a certain value. But he will not be able to say much regarding the use to which the instrument may be put, the effects which it is capable of producing, the connection existing between the arm itself and the bullet employed, besides numerous other questions of capital importance. Recourse must therefore be had to the experienced sportsman, the medical man, the inspector of musketry, the physicist, the chemist, and the microscopist. In many other cases, moreover, where the question is to

determine the effect of a bullet on different substances, yet other experts who are conversant with these substances must be questioned; in many cases experts consulted by the author have been unable to give a satisfactory reply, when an ordinary workman has answered without hesitation. The dresser of stone can tell us the resistance of the various kinds of stone, the locksmith can explain to us how a certain effect has been produced upon iron, and the botanist can indicate with accuracy the time and the season at which a bullet has struck a living tree and lodged in the wood.

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B. The Dangers of Expert Testimony. . . . The first question that arises when we are dealing with an important witness who has made observations and inferences, is this: "How intelligent is he? and what use does he make of his intelligence? That is, what are his processes of reasoning?" We start, therefore, with some simple fact which has arisen in the case and try to discover what the witness will do with it. It is not difficult; you may know a thing badly in a hundred ways, but you know it well in only one way. If the witness handles the fact properly, we may trust him. We learn, moreover, from this handling how far the man may be objective. His perception as witness means to him only an experience, and the human mind may not collect experiences without, at the same time, weaving its speculations into them. But though every one does this, he does it according to his nature and nurture. There is little that is as significant as the manner, the intensity, and the direction in and with which a witness introduces his speculation into the story of his experience. Whole sweeps of human character may show themselves up with one such little explanation. ... It is Hume, again, I think, who so excellently describes what happens when some inconceivable story is told to uncritical auditors. Their credulity increases the narrator's shamelessness; his shamelessness convinces their credulity. Thinking for yourself is a rare thing, and the more one is involved with other people in matters of importance, the more one is convinced of the rarity. . .

Now, how are we to meet people of this kind when they are on the witness stand? They offer no difficulty when they tell us that they know nothing about the subject in question. If, however, he is not honest enough immediately to confess his ignorance, nothing else will do except to make him see his position by means of questions, and even then to proceed carefully. It would be conscienceless to try to spare this man while another is shown up.

This is important when the witnesses examined are experts in the matter in which they are examined. I am convinced that the belief that such people must be the best witnesses, is false, at least as a generalization. Benneke has also made similar observations. "The chemist who perceives a chemical process, the connoisseur a picture, the musician a symphony, perceive them with more vigorous attention than the layman, but the actual attention may be greater with the latter." For our own affair, it is enough to know that the judgment of the expert will naturally be better than that of the layman; his apprehension, however, is as a rule one-sided, not so far-reaching and less uncolored. It is natural that every expert, especially when he takes his work seriously, should find most interest in that side of an event with which his profession deals. Oversight of legally important matters is, therefore, almost inevitable. I remember how an eager young

doctor was once witness of an assault with intent to kill. He had seen how in an inn the criminal had for some time threatened his victim with a heavy porcelain match tray. "The os parietale may here be broken," the doctor thought, and while he was thinking of the surgical consequences of such a blow, the thing was done and the doctor had not seen how the blow was delivered, whether a knife had been drawn by the victim, etc. Similarly, during an examination concerning breaking open the drawer of a table, the worst witness was the cabinetmaker. The latter was so much interested in the foreign manner in which the portions of the drawer had been cemented and in the curious wood, that he had nothing to say about the legally important question of how the break was made, what the impression of the damaging tool was, etc. Most of us have had such experiences with expert witnesses, and most of us have also observed that they often give false evidence because they treat the event in terms of their own interest and are convinced that things must happen according to the principles of their trades. However the event shapes itself, they model it and alter it so much that it finally implies their own apprehension.

As regards the practical method of procedure in examining experts, care must be taken not to allow different experts to make their experiments at the same time and give their advice together. The Investigating Officer who is directing the inquiry easily loses a concise view of the case when one expert draws conclusions from one side and another from the other side; it is difficult to understand the work of each, and it is impossible to reconcile the different statements and the conclusions given upon the whole. . . . Once the experiments are made and the reports sent in, the Investigating Officer will be able, following the case and the results of the reports, to bring the experts together, either all at once or in several groups; in this way he will perhaps find the agreement or the explanation of doubtful question or questions resolved in different ways; when the experts are already au courant with the matter and know what they have to reply they will agree together much more readily than if they have been allowed to work together from the outset.

222. RICHARD WHATELY. Elements of Rhetoric; comprising an Analysis of the Laws of Moral Evidence. (ed. 1893. p. 259.) . . . In no way, perhaps, are men, not bigoted to party, more likely to be misled by their favorable or unfavorable judgment of their advisers, than in what relates to the authority derived from Experience. Not that Experience ought not to be allowed to have great weight; but that men are apt not to consider with sufficient attention what it is that constitutes Experience in each point; so that frequently one man shall have credit for much experience, in what relates to the matter in hand, and another, who, perhaps, possesses as much, or more, shall be underrated as wanting it.

The vulgar, of all ranks, need to be warned, First, - that time alone does not constitute Experience; so that many years may have passed over a man's head, without his even having had the same opportunities of acquiring it, as another, much younger; Secondly, that the longest practice in conducting any business in one way, does not necessarily confer any experience in conducting it in a different way; e.g. ; an experienced Husbandman, or Minister of State, in Persia, would be much at a loss in Eu

rope; and if they had some things less to learn than an entire novice, on the other hand they would have much to unlearn; and, Thirdly, - that merely being conversant about a certain class of subjects, does not confer Experience in a case where the operations and the end proposed are different. It is said that there was an Amsterdam merchant, who had dealt largely in corn all his life, who had never seen a field of wheat growing; this man had doubtless acquired, by Experience, an accurate judgment of the qualities of each description of corn, of the best methods of storing it, of the arts of buying and selling it at proper times, etc.; but he would have been greatly at a loss in its cultivation; though he had been, in a certain way, long conversant about corn. Nearly similar is the Experience of a practiced Lawyer (supposing him to be nothing more) in a case of Legislation. Because he has been long conversant about Law, the unreflecting attribute great weight to his legislative judgment; whereas his constant habits of fixing his thoughts on what the law is, and withdrawing it from the irrelevant question of what the law ought to be; his careful observance of a multitude of rules (which afford the more scope for the display of his skill, in proportion as they are arbitrary and unaccountable) with a studied indifference as to that which is foreign from his business, the convenience or inconvenience of those Rules - may be expected to operate unfavorably on his judgment in questions of Legislation; and are likely to counterbalance the advantages of his superior knowledge, even in such points as do bear on the question. Again, a person who is more properly to be regarded as an Antiquarian than anything else, will sometimes be regarded as high authority in some subject respecting which he has perhaps little or no real knowledge or capacity, if he have collected a multitude of facts relative to it. Suppose, for instance, a man of much reading, and of retentive memory, but of unphilosophical mind, to have amassed a great collection of particulars respecting the writers on some science, the times when they flourished, the numbers of their followers, the editions of their works, etc., it is not unlikely he may lead both others and himself into the belief that he is a great authority in that Science; when perhaps he may in reality know though a great deal about it—nothing of it (see “Logic,” Introd., § I, p. 3). Such a man's mind, compared with that of one really versed in the subject, is like an antiquarian armory, full of curious old weapons, many of them the more precious from having been long since superseded, as compared with a well-stocked arsenal, containing all the most approved warlike implements fit for actual service. In matters connected with Political Economy, the experience of practical men is often appealed to in opposition to those who are called Theorists; even though the latter perhaps are deducing conclusions from a wide induction of facts, while the experience of the others will often be found only to amount to their having been long conversant with the details of office, and having all that time gone on in certain beaten tracks, from which they never tried, or witnessed, or even imagined a deviation. So also the authority derived from experience of a practical Miner, i.e. one who has wrought all his life in one mine, will sometimes delude a speculator into a vain search for metal or coal, against the opinion perhaps of Theorists, i.e. persons of extensive geological observation. It may be added, that there is a proverbial maxim which bears witness to the advantage sometimes possessed by an

observant bystander over those actually engaged in any transaction: "The looker-on often sees more of the game than the players." Now the looker-on (in Greek, Ocwpéw) is precisely the Theorist. ·

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223. SAMUEL S. PAGE. Personal Injury Actions. (Illinois Law Review, 1906. Vol. I, p. 35.) . . . There is a great field in the cross-examining of medical experts. Doctors who make a specialty of testifying for plaintiffs are very frequently both ignorant and vicious. They testify for contingent fees, and their evidence is frequently affected by their interest in the result. It is sometimes easy to show the ignorance of some so-called "experts." Not long ago, in one of my cases, a doctor testified that he was a graduate of a medical college; was attending surgeon at a hospital and had been on its advisory board for some years; was professor of surgery in a clinical school, and had examined and treated plaintiff, and in addition to his physical injury, plaintiff's mind was affected. A man who makes a specialty of mental diseases or testifies as an expert in regard thereto is called an "alienist," a term common and well known amongst physicians. Suspecting that the doctor was not an intelligent and well-informed one, my first question was: Doctor, are you an alienist? He answered with vigor: I am an American citizen. Q. Well, are you an alienist? A. (again, emphatically) I am an American citizen. Q. I didn't ask you that; are you an alienist? A. I am an American citizen. Q. Well, are you an alienist? A. I am an American citizen. Q. Well, are you an alienist? A. I am an American citizen. Q. Is that all the answer you will make? A. Yes. Q. Do you answer that way because you think I am inquiring whether you are a citizen or an alien? A. I told you I am an American citizen. On further questioning he said: I heard the word "alien" but could not define it. What it means I could not say at present. Q. What do you think it means? A. I don't know.

One condition of the eye is known as "Argyle-Robertson pupil." When this doctor was asked if he knew what that is, he said: "I can give you fifty-five or a hundred names. Every specialist has his name attached to the reflexes and the eye trouble." When asked again what it is, he answered: "It is according to what book or dictionary you read. It is different in different books. They have all kinds of definitions.". . . There are a great many reflexes, as they are called, but to any intelligent physician who has made a slight study of them, they are not at all difficult to know.

In a certain case plaintiff's expert doctor testified as to certain reflexes. On cross-examination he was asked if he took certain reflexes, and said that he did, and certain others he said he did not take but recognized as being standard tests in that kind of a case. Amongst the latter was the "Cerebro-Piper-Heidsieck." It is needless to say that "Piper-Heidsieck" is the name of a brand of champagne and there is no such reflex as "CerebroPiper-Heidsieck.”

224. RICHARD HARRIS. Hints on Advocacy. (Amer. ed. 1892. pp. 84, 97, 117.) Another class of witness deserving of notice is that of the semiprofessional. He is in fact semi-everything, half veracious and half liar; his word is positive and his respectability comparative.

I have in my mind a little, lean old man, with a high, narrow forehead