London Legal Letter. wardens in swearing so confidently to iden tity of prisoners, even after intervals of years. The legal fraternity should insist that this crude, barbarous method of iden tification should be swept away without further delay. I cannot repeat here de tails of the Bertillon system as already given in your columns and elsewhere. Suffice it to recall that M. Bertillon's method is seientific and absolutely infal lible. He records for each arrested person certain bone measurements, so selected as to serve readily for sorting into minute categories. By the laws of arithmetical progression, M. Bertillon enables us so to classify even millions of measurements into groups so uniform and so small as to enable anyone after search of a few minutes to turn out any particular record when the same subject again appears. Moreover, M. Ber tillon's records of personal appearance are so accurate and minute in character that even the most incredulous can have no doubt of the truth; when bodily peculiari ties are recorded to the tune of millimetres, the game of concealment is up, and error is
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out of the question. The legal fraternity cannot fail to be interested in the visit of Sir Charles Russell and Sir Richard Web ster to the Paris Anthropometric Bureau during the session of the Bering Arbitra tion Tribunal. Our illustrious legists were unstinted in their approval of anthropom etry. In fact, no lawyer could fail to see both the importance and perfection of M. Bertillon's system at a glance. It only needs the mere comparison of the auto matic anthropometry to the English reli ance on loose memory of an ignorant warden to have the latter laughed out of court. The recent discussions of criminal anthropometry in the scientific centres, especially the interest by that enthusiastic anthropologist Mr. Francis Galton, is wel comed as indicating the growth of public opinion in this matter, but it is incumbent on the legal fraternity to take heed that the scientists only contribute essentials and not embarrassing superfluities. It must be the Bertillon system pure and simple, or the benefit of international uniformity will be lost."
LONDON LEGAL LETTER. London, Dec. 1, 1894. LORD HERSCHELL'S latest additions to the ranks of Queen's Counsel have evoked a good deal of criticism. It has always been said that Lord Herschell was wont to complain of the indiscriminate manner in which his predecessor, Ix>rd Halsbury, distributed the dignity of " silk," but it is difficult to detect any difference between the policy of the two Lords Chancellor. It has almost come to this, that any barrister of ten years' standing who has any professional or polit ical position at all can have a silk gown for the asking : as Mr. Crump complains in the " Law Times," they are becoming cheap commodities; "they are given to retire upon, to decorate pro fessors, to ornament an inferior judge, to grace officials," and the natural consequence of this
enlargement of the ranks of Queen's Counsel has followed : a great number of them have nothing to do; they cut themselves adrift from the more laborious functions of junior practice, and dis cover when it is too late that they have exchanged a competence for titled indigence. We have a great and substantial grievance to complain of at present. Since the Inns of Court a year or two ago facilitated the passage of solicitors from the lower branch of the profes sion to the higher, there has been a constantly increasing stream of ambitious solicitors invading our ranks and rendering the competition for work much more intense. Men who come to the bar in this way have generally at their command many ramifications of interest and influence, so that it looks as if in the future anyone desirous
