OPTICAL DELUSIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 281, 27 November 1928, Page 17

OPTICAL DELUSIONS.

PHB VALUE OF DEFINITE k EVIDENCE. Some time ago a professor interested ta the value of optical evidence arranged a priceless test something like this: in the middle of his lecture appeared t&ree men and a girl. Thirst man presented a banana at the professor, the second dropped four books, the girl sat down on a bench, and the third man did astMng. Then, in the excitement of the moment the three men went out and the professor asked everybody to write an account of what had happened. When the accounts were ready, a great number Of people had actually seen a pistol, jnbody had noticed the girl, and not a Unfile account was accurate. Now in racing almost the same thing happens, and tt la quite extraordinary how little definite evidence several men can produce about a given fact, and how rarely any evidence produced is accurate when ttoroughly sifted. During the Tourist Trophy practice an F.N. skidded on the quarry turn and remained at the side of the road with its two offside wheels in a ditch. The members of a certain team discussed the matter after practice; two of them •aid It was a Frazer Nash, one of them maintained that it was a Lea-Francis; one swore it had an orange bonnet; another that it was a four-seater; one man held that the car was upside down, and another that it had a Brooklands tail. Now to show how "accurate" these drivers had been, it is sufficient to state that the car was an F.N.; it was a two-seater; it did not look a bit Uka a Fraser Nash; it had a sloping tafl on its body, and it had a green bonnet. The crew of one car to this very day do not remember exactly where they crashed, and even after a hot argument over a large-scale map are unable to place the position of the car exactly. Another driver repeatedly passed under a railway bridge, on top of whieh was a particularly obvious train crowded with passengers, yet he never noticed the train, while another driver stoutly alleges that there is only one railway bridge, instead of two, on tiie Comber-Dundonald stretch of the T.T. circuit. This all goes to show how extraordinarily difficult it is to obtain a coherent or accurate account of any single happening.