: TECHNICAL AND SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE IN COURTS OF LAW. 373 
The apex appears to be more truncate than that described and figured by 
Mr. Gosse. 
Mouth.—As described in ‘ Act. Brit.’ 
Colour. 
Oolwmn.--Straw-colour ; strie nearly white ; warts, when fully expanded, 
white, with a pellucid spot in the centre. 
Disk.—General colour similar to that of the column, radiated with white 
strie, with conspicuous radiating deep-red bands arising from a point within 
each inner tentacle, and passing in pairs round the tentacles, exactly as in 
Tealia crassicornis. 
Tentacles.—Pellucid white ; a broad magenta ring near the apex, gradually 
shading into pellucid white above the middle, and succeeded by an opake 
white band. 
Size, 
Height of column, 2 inches. 
Length of tentacles, when fully expanded, 5 inches. 
This specimen is still (Sept. 17, 1862) in full health and beauty; it has 
lost, however, a little of the brilliancy of the magenta or purplish colour on 
the tentacles. On some occasions it has slightly shifted its base on the stone 
to which it adheres, and after a few days moved back to its former site. 
In presenting this Report, Mr. Jeffreys observed that its most peculiar and 
interesting feature was the discovery of so many Arctic species of shells in a 
fossil state, mixed with recent shells of other species. He accounted for this 
assemblage of fossil and recent shells in the same spot by supposing that 
towards the close of the glacial epoch the sea-bed containing these arctic 
shells was gradually upheaved and became dry land, so as to exterminate the 
breed, and that subsequently the bed was submerged and inhabited by other 
species, which had either migrated from the south, or were diffused in course 
of time over the present area of the German Ocean. Such a state of things 
would imply very long periods of elevation and subsidence, 
Report of the Committee, consisting of the Rev. W. Vernon Harcourt, 
Right Hon. Josrru Napier, Mr. Tirz, M.P., Professor Curistison, 
Mr. J. Heywoop, Mr. J. F. Bareman, Mr. T. Wesstmr, on Tech- 
nical and Scientific Evidence in Courts of Law. 
Wrrrens on legal evidence have frequently animadverted on the testimony of 
professional witnesses in a Court of Justice as being contradictory and un- 
reliable, in a degree which materially diminishes its value; nor is it denied 
among the candid members of more than one profession that greater con- 
trarieties of opinion on technical and scientific subjects appear in the witness 
bow than can be satisfactorily accounted for, or than would be likely to arise 
anywhere else. 
The effect of such contradictions is not only to leave doubts on many 
important issues which art and science might well have decided, but to lower 
the authority and credit of all that class of evidence to such a point, that it 
has even been proposed very recently to dispense with it altogether in some 
cases which seem most to require the light that it might afford. 
The principal cause which has thus shaken the credit of professional 
