A CLEVER TEST.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2426, 28 January 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

A CLEVER TEST.

At a trial which took place in a German court of law the other day, M. Chevreul's researches into the law of colours enabled the jury to arrive ata decision in the face of some very conflicting evidence. A man employed in a manufactory at Dresden had let a hammer slip out of his hands and had seriously injured one of his fellowworkmen in the region of tho left eye. The wound was at once dressed by a snrt'eon, and after a time all traces of it had disappeared. The man maintained, however, that he had lost the use of the eye, and demanded compensation, but his employer, assured by the surgeon that his eye was uninjured, refused to meet his claim, and an action was accordingly brought. Although several medical men asserted that they could discover nothing wrong with the man's eye, he stuck to his statement, and the jury would have been very much puzzled to decide had not one of the experts hit upou the followiuir test, he handed the plaintiff a pair of spectacles, the glass for the right eye being red and that for tho loft r.ye ordinary white. He then asked him to read through them some words which he had written with a green lead pencil upon a black screen. The plainti(l unsuspiciously read them out, whereupon the expert pointed out that he must be able to see perfectly with his left eye, as the red glass in the right eye of the spectacles would turn the green letters into black, and make them invisible upon a black ground. The test was conclusive, and the plaintiff, who thought this a very unsportsmanlike proceeding, was nonsuited with costs.