There are several species of impositions that have been practised in
science, which are but little known, except to the initiated, and which
it may perhaps be possible to render quite intelligible to ordinary
understandings. These may be classed under the heads of hoaxing,
forging, trimming, and cooking.

OF HOAXING. This, perhaps, will be better explained by an example. In
the year 1788, M. Gioeni, a knight of Malta, published at Naples an
account of a new family of Testacea, of which he described, with great
minuteness, one species, the specific name of which has been taken from
its habitat, and the generic he took from his own family, calling it
Gioenia Sicula. It consisted of two rounded triangular valves, united by
the body of the animal to a smaller valve in front. He gave figures
of the animal, and of its parts; described its structure, its mode of
advancing along the sand, the figure of the tract it left, and estimated
the velocity of its course at about two-thirds of an inch per minute. He
then described the structure of the shell, which he treated with nitric
acid, and found it approach nearer to the nature of bone than any other
shell.

The editors of the ENCYCLOPEDIE METHODIQUE, have copied this
description, and have given figures of the Gioenia Sicula. The fact,
however, is, that no such animal exists, but that the knight of Malta,
finding on the Sicilian shores the three internal bones of one of the
species of Bulla, of which some are found on the south-western coast
of England, [Bulla lignaria] described and figured these bones most
accurately, and drew the whole of the rest of the description from the
stores of his own imagination.

Such frauds are far from justifiable; the only excuse which has been
made for them is, when they have been practised on scientific academies
which had reached the period of dotage. It should however be remembered,
that the productions of nature are so various, that mere strangeness
is very far from sufficient to render doubtful the existence of any
creature for which there is evidence; [The number of vertebrae in the
neck of the plesiosaurus is a strange but ascertained fact] and that,
unless the memoir itself involves principles so contradictory, as to
outweigh the evidence of a single witness, [The kind of contradiction
which is here alluded to, is that which arises from well ascertained
final causes; for instance, the ruminating stomach of the hoofed
animals, is in