“This institution”--the office of the coroner--“which some affect to consider moribund, seems on the contrary to exhibit both the fire of youth and the dignity of old age; see the South American mummy case (Aitken _v._ London and North Western Railway, _The Times_, December 11, 1901). This was an action against the railway company for damages for negligence in the carriage of a Peruvian mummy, which was broken in transit from South America to Belgium. In April, 1899, the package, sent from Liverpool, and addressed to ‘Maison de Melle, Belgium,’ had been opened at Broad Street. An inquest was held--verdict, ‘That the woman was found dead at the railway goods-station on April 15, and did die on some date unknown in some foreign country, probably South America, from some cause unknown. No proofs of a violent death are found. The body has been dried and buried in some foreign manner, probably sun-dried and cave-buried, and the jurors are satisfied that this body does not show any recent crime in this country, and that the deceased was unknown and about twenty-five years of age.’” (Mr. A. T. Carter, D.C.L.). * * * * * An interesting fiction, connected with death, at any rate, if not with coroners, though at a somewhat later period it would have come within their cognizance, arose through the provisions of William the Conqueror for the protection of his Norman followers. For every one killed, a fine was imposed upon the hundred in which the body was found. By the reign of Henry I., every dead man was presumed to be French, unless his Englishry could be proved. “A very neat doctrine for Revenue purposes, as the records show, for if a stranger is found dead, who can prove that he is English?” (Mr. A. T. Carter, D.C.L.). * * * * * The following newspaper report merits some further publicity: “At an inquest at Southwark, the need of an early operation in urgent circumstances was emphasised, and a doctor urged that the time had come for a reform of the law which makes it impossible to undertake any operation on a grievously injured child until its parents have been approached, persuaded, and their consent wrung from them.... A schoolboy of nine, John Joseph Huggins, of Haddon House, St. George’s Road, had been riding behind a van, according to the account of another small boy, and had fallen off before another van, of which a wheel had passed over his leg.