36d THE BORDERLAND OF SCIENCE. 



was discovered that one of the boxes which contained 

 them had been forced ; and on making further search 

 a large bag of dollars was discovered in the possession 

 of some one on board. The coins in the different 

 boxes were a mixture of all manner of dates and sove- 

 reigns ; and it occurred to the commander, that if the 

 contents of the boxes were sorted, a comparison of the 

 proportions of the different sorts in the bag, with those 

 in the box which had been opened, would afford strong 

 presumptive evidence one way or the other. This 

 comparison was accordingly made, and the agreement 

 between the distribution of the several coins in the bag 

 and those in the box was such as to leave no doubt as 

 to the former having formed a part of the latter.' If 

 the bag of stolen dollars had been a small one the 

 inference would have been unsafe, but the great number 

 of the dollars corresponded to a great number of chance 

 trials ; and as in such a large series of trials the several 

 results would be sure to occur in numbers corresponding 

 to their individual chances, it followed that the number 

 of coins of the different kinds in the stolen lot would 

 be proportional, or very nearly so, to the number of 

 those respective coins in the forced box. Thus, in this 

 case the thief increased the strength of the evidence 

 against him by every dollar he added to his ill-gotten 

 store. 



We may mention, in passing, an even more curious 

 application of this law, to no less a question than that 

 touch-talked of but little understood problem, the 

 squaring of the circle. It can be shown by mathe- 



