A very remarkable case, in illustration of the subject under discussion, is related by _Burnett_, in his _Treatise on the Criminal Law of Scotland_. “It occurred at Aberdeen in September 1804. The girl had become pregnant in circumstances peculiarly disastrous; actuated by the strongest impulse of shame and remorse, she concealed her situation from every one, and ascribed her appearance to cold she had caught. On the day of her delivery she had been to market, and in returning home accidentally slipt her foot, and fell into a mill-pond, where she would have been drowned had she not obtained immediate assistance. She was carried all wet into an adjoining malt-kiln, where there was a large fire, and left under the charge of another woman. The latter having gone out for a very short time, leaving the girl sitting by the fire, found on her return that she had been delivered of a child. The infant was in life, and lying at the extremity of the ashes near the fire. The girl said that her pains came on unexpectedly while sitting by the fire, and that she became insensible and could give no assistance to her child. No violence appeared on the body of the child, but it appeared to have been scorched by the fire, which occasioned its death a few hours thereafter. The prosecutor consented to a petition for banishment.” The next circumstance which deserves notice under the consideration of the causes of death, by _omission_, is that of _neglecting to divide the navel-string, and to apply a ligature to the infantine portion of it_.—With regard to the value of the presumptive proof of criminal intention which such neglect may offer, there are several very weighty objections, and which have been enumerated by _Dr. Hutchinson_, in the following order. 1. The infant may perish during its birth from hemorrhage from the placenta, or rupture of the navel string, and the mother may, or may not, have divided the latter. 2. The child may have lived after its birth, and the mother may have torn or cut asunder the navel-string, and finding no hemorrhage ensue she has not been led to put a ligature on the infantine portion, and afterwards hemorrhage has taken place from it, from which the infant has died. 3. The mother may discover the hemorrhage in the last mentioned case, and may apply a ligature to the navel string, but too late to preserve the infant’s life. 4. The blood of the mother may be artfully placed about the child, and the navel string left untied; and the mother may wish to have it appear that the infant perished from hemorrhage occurring unknown to her, and that she was not aware of the necessity of tying the navel-string, even though it be found that she had _cut_ it, not _torn it asunder_ with her hands. In the first three cases we shall find, on dissection, evidence of extensive hemorrhage, as indicated by the emptiness of the heart and blood-vessels, paleness of the viscera, &c. In the last case, the proper fulness of the arterial and venous systems