This _inference_ is drawn by a valid process of reasoning from a relatively minor fact or minor facts already directly deposed to by a witness, who may be a party interested in the case or cause, or a stranger-witness, either friendly or hostile. Hence, Circumstantial Evidence is _specially_ inferential and cumulative in its nature. It denotes the resultant of a method of knowledge, which has carried the Inquirer forward by successive stages of advancement. It implies the _inferring_ of the unknown from the known; but from a known which has been itself transmuted from the unknown, at some point of time anterior to the making of the successive stage of advancement in the knowledge of the facts sought to be proved, and vindicated by some rule of Law. * * * * * The following interesting account of Evidence generally is from the pen of Mr. Frank Pick, of Burton Lodge, York, a student of the Law:—— Evidence is the collective term used to denote the facts whereby some proposition, statement, or conclusion is sought to be established or confirmed. While, as thus defined, the term Evidence primarily denotes the actual _known_ facts themselves which form the basis or point of departure, it connotes also a method or process in the development of those known facts to a resultant fact or opinion: and the resultant fact or opinion so obtained. The former is often styled _Testimony_. This will be illustrated in Circumstantial Evidence, and in what is commonly styled “Expert Evidence,” though better, “Evidence of Opinion,” where a person from a consideration of certain facts not necessarily expressed (being likewise one specially competent to form an opinion where such certain facts are involved) gives an opinion which may be used as, and for similar purposes with, evidence as above defined. The value of evidence, _i.e._, the completeness and efficiency with which it serves these ends, varies with, and the weight accorded to it in judgment is determined from, a review of the character or quality of the source whence these facts proceed; and the nature or proximity of the relation which they bear to the proposition, statement, or conclusion to be supported. As regards the character or quality of its source, evidence is distinguished into primary and secondary. Primary Evidence is the witness or testimony of personal experience, whether shown in the spoken or written word or by conduct. Or it may be described as, on its positive side, the avowal or confession of fact of a person present knowingly, at the manifestation, in consciousness of the phenomenon to which the fact corresponds: on its negative side, as the denial or negation of fact similarly conditioned. Secondary Evidence comprises all the manifold degrees of nearness or remoteness to primary evidence.