According to the present state of English law, infanticide--murder of a _new-born_ child--is not regarded as a specific crime, but is treated and tried by those rules of evidence which are applicable in cases of felonious homicide, but with this difference, that the law requires proof that the child was born alive. An old Statute (21 Jac. I. c. 27) made the concealment of the birth of a bastard child conclusive evidence of murder. As far as the legal estimation of the crime is concerned, it matters not whether the child was killed immediately on its entrance into the world, or within a few days afterwards. A fœtus not bigger than a man‘s finger, but having the shape of a child, is a child within the Statute (R. _v._ Colmer, 9 Cox, 506; R. _v._ Hewitt, 4 F. & F. 1101). An English judge, at a late trial, stated that if the jury were of the opinion that the prisoner had strangled her child before being wholly born, she must be acquitted of murder. The law also, on the score of humanity, presumes that every child is born dead until direct evidence to the contrary, from medical or other sources, is given. The onus of the proof of live birth, therefore, devolves on the prosecution. It may also be difficult to decide as to the maternity, and the woman accused will have to be examined as to the possibility of her recent delivery. Here let me repeat the advice given on page 148 as to the examination of a woman. Your duty is to request the woman to allow of the necessary examination, giving her the warning which every magistrate or coroner is bound to give to any person charged with a crime, before requiring an answer to a question which may be used in evidence against her at the subsequent trial. The innocent and the guilty may alike object to an examination, but the presumption is against the party declining, if several have voluntarily submitted. A young lady committed suicide rather than submit to an examination by two medical men under an order from the coroner. The medical men were guilty of a grave indiscretion, and both they and the coroner were acting _ultra vires_ in attempting to force a woman to obtain evidence against herself (Taylor, vol. ii. p. 431).