_Whether any indications of a struggle having happened on the spot are visible on the ground, or herbage near the deceased; and whether any footsteps can be traced near the body?_—The Cornish case presents itself to us again in illustration of this question. There are also several cases where impressions upon the snow have led to the detection of the guilty party. In the case of _Wm. Spiggot_, _Wm. Morris_, _David Morgan_, _Walter Evans_, _Charles Morgan_, and _David Llewellin_, for the murder of _Wm. Powell, Esq._ at Glenareth, in Caermarthenshire, March 30, 1770, footsteps were traced from _Powell’s_ house (a deep snow having just fallen) to that of _Charles Morgan_, who was in consequence apprehended, and did not long deny the fact. Some very interesting evidence was delivered upon the subject of footsteps, on the celebrated trial of _Abraham Thornton_, for the murder of _Mary Ashford_, at the Warwick assizes of 1817. _William Lovell_, a workman at Penn’s Mills, and several other witnesses, spoke as to the presence and direction of the footsteps of a man and a woman, which approached each other at one spot; their appearance shewed that the persons had been running, and dodging each other, “as well from the stride, as the sinking in of the ground, and the little scrape at the toe of the woman’s shoe.” The footsteps were afterwards compared with the shoes of _Thornton_, and found to coincide; the shoes, moreover, had a particular nail, called a _sparrow bill_, the impression of which was also perceptible. The same comparison was made with the shoes of the unfortunate _Mary Ashford_, and with a result which appeared to be equally satisfactory and conclusive. Instances have also occurred in which the presumption of guilt against certain persons has arisen from the absence of such marks; this happened in the murder of _Mr. Jeffries_, by _Elizabeth Jeffries_, his niece, and _John Swan_, his servant, at Walthamstow, in July 1751; in which case the perpetrators of the deed were suspected to have been domestics, from the single circumstance of the dew on the grass surrounding the house not having been disturbed on the morning of the murder, which must have happened, had any persons left the premises.