Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/581

 THE SAIiDRlNGHAM. 569 �lies appareutiy as great but often mueli less than are indicated by Bcientilie instruments, There is accordingly observable, in some of the testimony taken in this case, a discrepancy between scientifie reports of winds and swells at Cape Henry, made from instrumental observations taken on shore, and the statements of seamen ^ho were engagid in the vessels and surf-boats outside. And, as I am under the noce^sity of passing upon the relative value of this testimony, I am frec to say that I am not inclined to repose entire confidence in the reporls of the officers of the signal service as to facts out at sea, when they conflict with testimony of experienced and credible sea- men. Indeed, these reports eannot be received between parties to a litigation as evidence in the strict legal sense. They lack the two sanelione necessary to the validity of legal testimony, viz., that of being given on oath, and that of being subjected to the opportunity of cross-examination. �The courts are doubtless at liberty to take judicial notice of these reports as historical minutes of the course of natural events; but they certainly are not bound, and perhaps not at liberty, to give full credence to them in prejudice to the interests of litigants, vrhen con- tradicted by the testimony of practical mariners of unquestioned credibility. The depositions of experienced mariners as to events of which they have practical knowledge, given on oath and under cross- examination, is certainly a higher grade of evidence than such reports; and where the witnesses are well known andenjoy a character beyond impeachment, it must be preferred. No doubt the scientifie reports are true, mathematically, as of the isolated points of time and place to which they refer ; yet all naked mathematical facts occurring in the course of nature are more or less modified by circumstances which do not appear in the barren scientifie minutes which record their occurrence. If a surf-boat crossing dangerous breakers in a high wind on a sea-swell is suddenly caught up and capsized, the prop- erty on board lost, and the men drowned, the collision of elements which aetually did occur, and did produce the catastrophe, may not be denied to have occurred on the faith of a minute taken an hour or two before or afterwards, at the nearest signal station on shore, showing that the wind was the time not blowing a "gale," but only at the rate of 44 miles an hour, and that the swell was "light south- east." �\ swell that is light along the shore may produce angry, roaring, enguliing breakers out on a reef but a few hundred yards off. If the witness to nautical facts be an intelligent person of experience and ��� �