PRACTICAL TESTS IN EVIDENCE. By Irying Browne. I. TN the early and rude ages there was a strong leaning toward the adoption of de monstrative and practical tests upon disputed questions. Doubting Thomases demanded the satisfaction of their senses. The accused was confronted with the body of the victim. The judgment of Solomon was the typical ex ample of this demand, and a striking instance of the satisfactory character of the result of the compliance with it. The shrewd and homely sense of Governor Sancho Panza devised several practical tests which proved emi nently decisive, the most striking of which was that adopted by him in the rape case, which must have occurred to the mind of any modern lawyer witnessing a trial on such an accusation, accompanied by the mental query whether it might not still preserve its efficacy. As society grew civilized and re fined, it seemed disposed to despise these demonstrative methods, and incline more to the preference of a narration, at second-hand, by eye and ear witnesses. But in this busy century there seems to have been a relapse to ward the earlier experimental spirit, and a dis position to make assurance doubly sure by any practicable method addressed to the senses. And so in recent days the instances have been numerous, and are constantly growing more numerous, of a resort to exhibitions, experiments, and tests made out of court and proved by testimony, or in court before the eyes and ears of the jury called on to pro nounce upon the issue of fact. This species of evidence was called " real " by Bentham. Others have named it "demonstrative," and the latest term for it is " immediate." A review of recorded instances of the intro duction of such evidence must prove use ful, and will not be devoid of interest and amusement.

Exhibition of the Human Body. i. In civil cases. There is no doubt that one suing for damages for physical injury may submit his body to surgical examination before trial, and have the result testified to by experts, or in a case not involving inde cent exposure, may exhibit the marks of injury to the jury on the trial. Mulhado v. Railroad Co., 30 N. Y. 370; Schroeder v. Railroad Co., 47 Iowa, 375; Brown v. Swineford, 44 Wis. 282; Indiana Car Co. v. Par ker, 100 Ind. 181. In the celebrated Tichborne case the claimant was allowed to exhibit his thumb to a witness who had testified to a peculiarity in Sir Roger's thumb. But whether this is- not purely optional with the plaintiff, and whether the defendant may compel such preliminary examination or such exposure at the trial, is a point on which there is much conflict of opinion. It is prob ably the general rule that such examination or exposure is compulsory, some cases as serting the absolute right, others bounding it by judicial discretion. The latest judicial expression, however, is to the contrary. In Railroad Co. v. Botsford, in the United' States Supreme Court, 141 U. S. 250, s. c. 44 Al bany Law Journal, 325, it was held that the courts of the United States have no power, in an action for personal injuries, to order before the trial an examination of the body of the injured person. Mr. Justice Gray gives a comprehensive and concise state ment of the various rulings, as follows : — "So far as the books within our reach show, no order to inspect the body of a party in a personal action appears to have been made, or even moved for, in any of the English courts of common law, at any period of their history. The inviolability of the