The further inference was that the jeweller must either have torn them apart and put one on the earlier receipt and the other on the later one at the same time, or he must have had the second stamp put aside for three months and then affixed it to the later receipt. A much more obvious slip than this was made some years ago in a bogus claim upon a fire insurance company, the story of which is related in Lord Brampton's "Reminiscences." The fire broke out on the premises of a firm of tailors, and it was claimed by them that the whole of their stock, including many hundred pairs of trousers, had been destroyed. The insurance company, after examining the burnt-out building, instructed a number of their agents to sift carefully the whole of the ashes. At the hearing of the case the counsel for the company remarked that it was strange that in a fire in which so many pairs of trousers had been burned the metal buttons upon them should not have been found. On the next day the tailors appeared with a whole bucketful of buttons, but their production was too late to be convincing, for the ashes had been thoroughly sifted before the claimants attempted to make good their oversight, and only a very few trouser buttons had been discovered. On the other hand, the danger of jumping to a sudden conclusion from circumstances has been frequently demonstrated. Thus, a very extraordinary case in which some facts that clearly pointed to the guilt of a prisoner were found to have misled many witnesses, was tried in 1813 at the assizes at Bury St. Edmunds. A farmer who owned upwards of 1,200 acres was accused of burglary, and as evidence against him it was positively stated that certain articles in his possession had been stolen from the house. The witnesses swore that they had identified some sheets by stains upon them and a cask by the fact of its being marked with the letters P.C. 84 in a circle. For the defence, witnesses stated that the prisoner was in possession of sheets stained in exactly the same way, and that the cask was one of those in which he had received cranberries from Norwich, all of which casks were marked in the same manner. The prisoner was acquitted. Scientific testimony is another form of the so-called "circumstantial evidence," and as such is sometimes looked upon with suspicion. Yet in how few cases is it possible to produce the man who can say, "I saw the deed done," and even in such cases, what errors of identification may occur! In far the greater number of crimes the proof must depend to a large extent upon the evidence of circumstances. But these must be so convincing that it is impossible in reason to draw any other conclusion from them. In this country it is the duty of the prosecution to prove the guilt, and unless that is done in such a way as to leave no shadow of doubt in the minds of the jury, a prisoner is entitled to be acquitted.