POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



423 



en rise to an Emmet's operation, Battcy's 

 or Hegar's operation, an Alexander's opera- 

 tion, etc. Tlie reviews and journals speak 

 of them and praise them, so that a gynae- 

 cologist who has no " cases " to produce is 

 little thought of. In the same strain M. 

 Verneuil criticised other measures recently 

 in vogue, and hinted that most of them 

 would in process of time become as disre- 

 garded as the once prevailing fashion of an 

 iridectomy preliminary to cataract extrac- 

 tion. Much had been made of late years, 

 he said, of extirpations of the larynx, of the 

 pharynx, of the stomach, of the uterus, of 

 the kidneys, etc., and he asked, " IIow many 

 patients have been cured thereby ? How 

 many have derived any benetit whatever 

 from these terrible undertakings ? Barely 

 ten per cent. For these I admit that the 

 operation has been of service, but for the 

 ninety others can its abuse be denied ? Giv- 

 en a hundred cases of disease," he added, " at 

 a certain period one half are operated upon ; 

 twenty years later not more than one fourth 

 are submitted to operation. If the results 

 of the two series are equally successful, I 

 conclude that, of fifty of the operations in 

 the first scries, twenty-five at least were su- 

 perfluous." 



Hediatval English Law. — A collection of 

 records of English criminal cases of a. d. 

 1221 has recently been published, in which 

 may be found numerous illustrations of the 

 condition and peculiarities of the law of the 

 period. In a case where the persons charged 

 with a triple murder had fled and could not 

 be held, it was recorded that "Englishry 

 was not proved, therefore there are three 

 fines." This refers to a rule made by the 

 Conqueror, for the protection of his follow- 

 ers, that the hundred or township in which 

 a foreigner was slain should be fined if the 

 slayer was not produced. On the strength 

 of this, the lawyers invented a tradition that 

 every one should be considered a foreigner 

 till it could be proved that he was an English- 

 man ; and they took care that this should 

 not be an easy thing to prove. In Glouces- 

 tershire, where these trials took place, three 

 witnesses had to be produced, two on the 

 father's and one on the mother's side. Xo 

 woman's testimony was admitted. Conse- 

 quently, in a great many cases, where prob- 



ably there was no reason to believe the 

 victim to have been a foreigner, " Englishry 

 was not proved," and the death-fine was 

 exacted. Prisoners not caught in the com- 

 mission of the offense seem to have had 

 the privilege of declining to be tried, when 

 they enjoyed the possibility of escaping 

 punishment. One John de la Mare, who 

 had killed a miller with a stone, refused to 

 be tried by a jury, saying he had been in 

 the war with King John, and had done 

 harm to many people. He was not produced 

 when he was wanted, and his securities were 

 fined half a mark apiece. A father and 

 son, suspected of murdering a person who 

 had been their guest, denied the charge, 

 and refused to put themselves on their 

 country. The jury, corresponding to our 

 grand jury, however, declared that the son 

 and his mother had committed the murder, 

 and decided that the father should be re- 

 leased on bail, while the others should bo 

 kept in prison. The records of the trials 

 offer several instances of the old custom of 

 levying deodands. Robert Sprenghose fell 

 from his horse and was drowned. The val- 

 ue of the horse, two marks, was assessed 

 as deodand. One Osbert fell from his horse 

 and was drowned in the Severn ; the horse 

 had no value, and no deodand could be as- 

 sessed. " William Miel fell down dead as 

 he drove the plough of Richard Sarg, his 

 master, and Richard Witcpirie, who was 

 with him and held the plough, fled in a 

 fright ; but he is not suspected by twelve 

 jurors, who declare on their oath that this 

 happened by maladventure, and that the 

 man had the falling-sickness." The justices 

 decreed : " If Richard returns, he is to be 

 left in peace. The coroner has forty pence 

 of the said Richard's chattels. These are 

 a deodand, and arc to go to the house of 

 Llantony." The power of levying deodands 

 gave opportunities for abuse, which, with 

 other oi)portunities of a similar tendency, 

 the sheriffs were not slow of improving to 

 their ovra profit. 



Salt Lakes of the Mnrghab Valley.— 



In .the Murghab Valley, Afghanistan, are 

 two lakes of solid salt, which Captain Yate 

 has ridden over and described. One, from 

 which the Tekke-Turkomans of Merv get 

 their supplies of salt, is in a valley about 



