Dresden enterprise and Sharon tribune. (Dresden, Tenn.) 1907-1997, 1921-10-21

John Herschel was then known TO he
actually at the Cape for the British
government, and 1t was only tha
signed statement from that great as
tronomer, branding the whole report
as pure fabrication. and that 1t was
merely the mental eye Of one Richard
Alton Locke which had gazed through
II and examined the weird life on .
moon absolutely and solely of bis own
making!
When the science Of geology YEAS
still In the hands Of It's pioneers. old
Professor BerlngeF lectured in the Vpl.
ysrsity q WYEHDurg Gig Stude9k
knew the flvOrlEs haunts where tNs
genial old scholar went to collect TO-
sils 10 the development Of his theories
about the beginnings Of life, so they
powdered up the rocks OF bis pot
strata and manufactured some fossils
and buried them In q perfectly limo
cent way. Il was not long before the
professors hammer and his inQuiring
eyes discovered some evidences Of
totally new kind Of extinct lifN He
found frogs and snakes and insects
galore. The students watched bis en-
thuSiasm grow. One day he came upon
the cast of spider In its web, with
not strand disturbed these hundred
thousand years.
At last, he unearthed rock upon
which was inscribed the Hebrew
word for Jehovah. Now" thought
old Professor Beringer, ~ am right.
My opponents. who uphold, slow evo-
luton, are proven wrong. All life Ia
the work Of Creator, who has not
only been kind enough to leave traces
here, but also the images Of the heay-
emily bodies to complete the scheme;
and last Of all, has appended His sig
nature TO make 1t official"
And on this basis the professor pub
lished his book. profusely illustrated,
the title page presenting . pyramid Of
the fossils surmounted by the stone
with Jehovah, and he dedicated 1t to
the Prince Of WurtEburg. But when
poor old Beringer heard his book
greeted by universal shout Of derl.
sion he awoke to the truth. He de-
strOyed what copies he had, recalled
as many MS he could, and shortly after
died, broken-hearted.
Mark Twain's Hoax.
The discovering Of petrifed man
became fad in the West. about this
time, and it took Mark Twain to use
the mania In little fraud of his own
to get revenge upon an enemy He
tells how he launched in the journal
he then edited, series of articles de-
scribing with infinite plausibllty
stone man newly found in locality
about five days distant, over a des-
ert from where his enemy lived His
readers heard that this gentleman,
new coroner, took the cruel journey
to hold an Inquest over this man, dead
for ten generations! And when they
were once under his spell the exposure
OF the fraud would come when his
readers realized that he had placed
the two hands Of the petrified man be-
fore his nose in q most disrespectfuI
gesture. But the story spread from
state to state, until 1t finally appeared
with ''unimpeachable legitimacy" In y
London paper.
OF course, we say, these things can.
not happen any more. despite the fact
that we have our Madame Palladinos
Of questionable spirits and our PoHSi's
OF temporary money doubling abilities
With q host Of followers. 1t was only
two years short of the twentieth CEN
fury that a glorious gold brick turned
up in perhaps its most undlsguised
form. The ElectrOlytic Marine Salts
company. headed by the supposedly 4
Rev. Mr.. L. F. Jernegan and supplied
with full line Of scientific arguments,
claimed to obtain its particular species
OF brick from the gold in the sea. 1t
managed to coax $1,0OO,O0O from Bos-
tonian pockets
The Hoax Of "Hot Ice"
This case does not stand alone. It
was practically a repetition of the
''hOt Ice" which it became the vogue
to manufacture in certain scientific |
circles In 1880. The first hint Of this
appeared In the magazine |
Nature, when Thomas Canelly stated
ne had made ice so hot that he burned |
his fingers. Even Sir Oliver !. Lodge |
wrote that he for one accepted the |
point as fact, and in suggesting an |
experiment. he calmly stated that Car
nelly should heat the ice up to any |
he wanted" and, although
we usually think just the other way,
that when he should remove the heat
he should see the ice rapidly collapse
Just when everybody was beginning to
be surprised that no one had thought
VI hot ice before and great popular
ity was being predicted for this warm
kind of cold, failure to get proper re-
suits were reported The following
month the matter of hot ice was con-
STcuous by its absence from the scien-
life journals.
And yet it is hard to know when to
laugh. What was obviously hoax
because of its utter impos-
,ibiIity, becomes ~ commonplace
reality of today. 1t was a glorious
nnnv In 1911 ,rhnn a nrnnt Nn,,, Ynrir