On the 19th of June, 1889, pursuant to the order of the court, the alleged will referred to was first photographed, and later in that day such places as had been designated in the order were chemically treated, as part of a series of experiments. The results obtained briefly summarized were as, follows: The instrument which purported to be a holographic will of Thomas J. Monroe the experiments showed conclusively to be not the case, as neither pen nor ink in the body writing portion or in the decedent's signature had ever touched the paper; the date and names of the witnesses thereon were written, however, with pen and ink. Furthermore, the experiments demonstrated beyond question that exclusive of its date and names of witnesses, that it was what is commonly known as a transfer taken from a gelatine pad (hektograph), a method of duplicating popularly in vogue at that time. The deduced facts in the matter being that Thomas J. Monroe had written his will in an aniline purple ink, to which he had appended his name, leaving blank spaces to be filled in for the date, names of witnesses, etc., and had transferred the same to a hektograph, from which he had taken a number of duplicate facsimile copies, and at some other time had filled in the blank spaces by ordinary methods and to which, at his request, the names of the witnesses had been written with a pen and ink. In the trial which followed the surrogate declined to sustain the allegation of the proponents that the alleged signature was the original writing of Thomas J. Monroe, or indeed of any person. The will was not admitted to probate. Experiments, both in open court or during its sessions in the testing of ink and paper, microscopically and chemically, are of frequent occurrence, and many contests involving enormous interests have been more or less decided as the result of them. The contest of the alleged will of George P. Gordon, tried before the late Chancellor McGill of New Jersey in 1891, illustrates in a remarkable degree just how certain are the results of investigations of this character. The chancellor's decision, after listening to testimony for many weeks, was in effect to declare the will a forgery, largely because of the fact that the premise on which it rested was a so-called draft, from which it was sworn it had been copied. The ink on this draft it was proved could not have had an existence. until many years after the date of the forged will. The decedent, who died in 1878, was the inventor of a famous printing press, and left a large fortune. A will offered for probate soon after the death of Gordon was not probated, owing to the discovery that the witnesses had not signed it in each other's presence. The principal beneficiaries, however, under that will, the widow and daughter of Gordon, agreed to a division of the estate which was satisfactory to the other heirs at law, and the matter apparently was settled.