A very remarkable case, in illustration of the subject under discussion, is related by Burnett, in his Treatise on the Criminal Law of Scotland. "It occurred at Aberdeen in September 1804. The girl had become pregnant in circumstances peculiarly disastrous; actuated by the strongest impulse of shame and remorse, she concealed her situation from every one, and ascribed her appearance to cold she had caught. On the day of her delivery she had been to market, and in returning home accidentally slipt her foot, and fell into a mill-pond, where she would have been drowned had she not obtained immediate assistance. She was carried all wet into an adjoining malt-kiln, where there was a large fire, and left under the charge of another woman. The latter having gone out for a very short time, leaving the girl sitting by the fire, found on her return that she had been delivered of a child. The infant was in life, and lying at the extremity of the ashes near the fire. The girl said that her pains came on unexpectedly while sitting by the fire, and that she became insensible and could give no assistance to her child. No violence appeared on the body of the child, but it appeared to have been scorched by the fire, which occasioned its death a few hours thereafter. The prosecutor consented to a petition for banishment."
The next circumstance which deserves notice under the consideration of the causes of death, by omission, is that of neglecting to divide the navel-string, and to apply a ligature to the infantine portion of it.—With regard to the value of the presumptive proof of criminal intention which such neglect may offer, there are several very weighty objections, and which have been enumerated by Dr. Hutchinson, in the following order. 1. The infant may perish during its birth from
