Stains upon the prisoner's clothing were identified as human blood by the serum test. The revolver which Mrs. Storrs had snatched from the murderer was also identified as having belonged to Wilde, for it was recognised by two ex-soldiers who had, they alleged, frequently seen it in his hands, by its broken spring and marks upon its barrel. For the defence, however, witnesses were called to prove that the revolver taken from the murderer was not identical with that of Wilde, and that the blood upon his clothes was the result of a fight he had had upon the night of the crime. No motive could be alleged, and the jury distrusting the evidence of identification, found the prisoner "Not guilty." The murder was thus unique in the fact that two innocent men were in succession identified as the assailant and acquitted. With regard to the amount of light needed for the recognition of a person, curious scientific evidence has been given in trials, and several cases are on record where witnesses have claimed to identify a person by a momentary flash. A notable instance of this kind was seen at the trial of Joseph Brook for burglary at the York Assizes in 1813. The prisoner, it was alleged, had broken into the house of a farmer named Strickland at Kirk Heaton. Anne Armitage, a niece of the farmer, deposed that he had struck upon the stone floor with something she took for a sword to intimidate her, that it produced a flash, and gave a light by which she could see his face. She swore that she had seen enough by the momentary flash to recognise him again. She had also heard his voice, and knew it again when she heard it later, and thought she could undertake to say that it was the voice of the accused man. The prisoner set up an alibi, and the jury, although as they stated subsequently, not believing in this alibi, returned a verdict of "Not guilty." The question of the possibility of a person firing a gun or pistol being identified by the light of the flash was submitted to a committee of scientific men in Paris, in 1809, and their conclusion was that such identification was not possible. On the other hand, the evidence in a case that was tried shortly afterwards in France indicated that under favourable conditions the face of the person who had fired a gun might be recognised. A man had fired at another at night, and a woman who was near at the time, swore at the trial that the flash had plainly shown her the face of the assailant. Similar evidence was also given by the man who had been wounded. Experiments to determine this point were made by Desgranges, at Lyons, and from the results of these he concluded that there was a possibility of such identification at a short distance from the flash of the gun, provided that the night was very dark and that there was no other source of light to interfere with the gun-flash; but that if the flash was very pronounced, or much smoke was produced it was not possible to recognise the person firing the gun.