We should not have alluded to personal resemblance[345] between parents and children, as a mode of proof in these cases, first, as we have doubted whether such proof can be satisfactory, and secondly, as it may not be considered a point of medical evidence; but as to our first doubt, we find that so high an authority as Lord _Mansfield_ thought that a family likeness was a material proof that a child was the genuine offspring of the parents through whom he claimed. His lordship in delivering his judgment in the House of Lords on the Douglas cause, is reported to have said, “I have always considered likeness as an argument of a child’s being the son of a parent; and the rather, as the distinction between individuals in the human species is more discernible than other animals[346]: a man may survey ten thousand people before he sees two faces perfectly alike; and in an army of a hundred thousand men every one may be known from another. If there should be a likeness of feature, there may be a discriminancy of voice, a difference in the gesture, the smile, and various other characters; whereas a family likeness runs generally through all these, for in every thing there is a resemblance, as of features, size, attitude, and action. And here it is a question, whether the appellant most resembled his father Sir _John_, or the younger _Sholto_ resembled his mother Lady _Jane_? Many witnesses have sworn to Mr. _Douglas_ being of the same form and make of body as his father; he has been known to be the son of Colonel _Stewart_, by persons who had never seen him before; and is so like his elder brother, the present Sir _John Stewart_, that except by their age, it would be hard to distinguish the one from the other.” “If Sir _John Stewart_, the most artless of mankind, was actor in the _enlevement_ of _Mignon_ and _Saury’s_ children, he did in a few days what the acutest genius could not accomplish for years; he found two children, the one the finished model of himself, and the other the exact picture in miniature of Lady _Jane_[347]. It seems nature had implanted in the children what is not in the parents; for it appears in proof that in size, complexion, stature, attitude, colour of the hair, and eyes, nay in every other thing, _Mignon_ and his wife, and _Saury_ and his spouse were, _toto cœlo_, different from and unlike to Sir _John Stewart_ and Lady _Jane Douglas_.” 2 _Collec. Jurid. p._ 402. A painter or a sculptor would be more competent to decide a question of this nature than a physician or surgeon, but in their absence there is none on whose testimony we can more safely rely than on the medical witness, whose habits of observing the formation, changes, and peculiarities of the human body, naturally prepare him for such examination.