JUDGE —"You do not seem to realize the enormity of the charge against you." Prisoner—"No, I ain't got my lawyer's bill yet, but I'm expectin' the charge'll be enormous, all right." MR. CASSIDY surveyed the examining counsel with undisguised contempt, which in nowise disconcerted the lawyer. "And why, may I ask, did you not go to the help of the defendant, in the fight?" in quired the lawyer. "For the r'ason," said Mr. Cassidy, in a tone of blighting scorn, "that at that toime Oi had no means of knowing which o' thim would be the defindant!" Youth's Companion. THE lord steward, the treasurer, the comptroller and the master of the household, say Tid Bits in speaking of the King's house hold, are the four ddgnitaries who preside in a judicial capacity at the board of green cloth and the court of the Marshalsea—two little known courts of large and varied jurisdiction. The court of green cloth not only in cludes Buckingham Palace within its domin ion, but the whole district within a radius of twelve miles, and at one time held the power of life and death over traitors and murder ers. Now, alas, its function is chiefly to set tle disputes on points of etiquette and pre cedence, or arrange kitchen and other domes tic differences. The court of the Marshalsea, to which many officials, including constables, are attached, has jurisdiction over all royal houses other than Buckingham Palace. IN the sixteenth century the Scottish Par liament appears to have given much consider ation to the question of how best to deal with persons who sought by various means to enhance the price of commodities for their own advantage, for the statute-book contains quite a series of enactments on the subject. The leading Act is that of 1592, c. 150, which defines "forestalling" as the buying up of commodities on their way to market or be fore they are actually exposed for public sale, the making of any motion by word, writ, or
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message for raising prices, or the dissuading of anyone from carrying his goods to mar ket. "Regrating" is defined as the buying of victuals at a market and reselling them at the same or any other market within four miles, or buying growing corn on the field. "En grossing," so far as it was a separate offence, appears to have consisted in the buying up of large quantities of provisions for the pur pose of selling them again and thus enabling the "engrossers" to raise the price. Penal ties of increasing severity, culminating in escheat of the offender's whole moveable property on a third conviction, were imposed on persons committing these offences, but few, if any, convictions are recorded, and, although these primitive economic enact ments have not been expressly repealed, they are now in desuetude.— The Lam Journal. THERE are numerous instances of crim inals being identified by their footprints, but a case at the Northumberland Assizes in which the identity of a burglar was proved chiefly by the marks of his teeth is probably unique in the annals of crime. A burglary had been committed in a general shop, and the only clue was that the criminal had left his boots behind and' that the marks of his teeth remained in a piece of butter which he had bitten. A peculiarity in the shape of the boots caused suspicion to fall on an individ ual who was promptly arrested, and a cast of his mouth was at once taken by a dentist with his consent. The dentist was able to point out in Court that the cast exactly fitted the marks in the butter, where even' pecu liarity of the prisoner's teeth was reproduced, and he also stated that no two persons' mouths were exactly alike. There was also identification of one of the boots by a shoe maker as being one which he had repaired for the accused. Other evidence of any weight to connect him with the crime there was none; but the jury convicted him after a short deliberation, "and there can be little doubt that his liking for butter was chief cause of his undoing.—The Law Journal.
