SCIENTIFIC HOAXES.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1123, 19 July 1883, Page 3

SCIENTIFIC HOAXES.

Some of the newspapers here have beer hauling the Otago Times over the coals for publishing a sensational story about new discoveries in electricity, that paper having a detailed account of an experiment supposed to have been made in Melbourne, where forty scientific men, sitting in a darkened room were credidly declared to have witnessed a kind of panorama of the racecourse ot Flemington transmitted for their benefit by electricity. The idea is no new one, but lam bound to say the story comes from Otago, via the United States, and may have received some additions en route. It is alleged also that the tale about throwing sheep into a trance and suspending animation during any length of time, and which for a long time was almost believed in here, also originated in New Zealand, but my -impression is that its home was Australia. These jeux d’esprit remind me of the famous hoax which some years ago, threw the whole scientific world into a frenzy of excitement about the moon. Some clever American wrote a pamphlet describing a novel telescope, by which our satellite underwent such a thorough examination that its inhabitants with their buildings, modes of life, domestic animals, etc., were all clearly revealed and described in detail. It is said to have even deluded the famous French savant Argo.