234 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh, [march 19, 
public prosecutor, as ofiences against society as well as against an 
individual. 
2nd. The oath of the mother should always be accepted as proof 
of guilt, unless an alibi can be established. 
3rd. The employment of females as out-door workers, without due 
supervision, ought to be made penal. 
4th. The Local Authority should be entrusted with the duty of 
seeing that female servants are provided with proper sleeping 
apartments. 
5th. Obscene language and indecent exposure should be more 
strictly dealt with than at present. 
The only one of these suggestions to which, I think, any reason- 
able objection can be offered is the second. All Scottish lawyers 
are familiar with the difficulties which used to attend the question 
of semiplena probatio and the oath in supplement. The relative 
rules of law have been superseded, but not abolished, by the 
Evidence Act of 1853, which allows parties to a suit to be 
examined as witnesses; and the woman, being now entitled to 
give testimony, is not permitted to emit her oath in supplement, 
on the ground of a semiplena probatio having been established.* 
It has also been suggested that it should be made compulsory for 
the mother of an illegitimate child, at the registration of its birth, 
to report the supposed father, with a view to the insertion of his 
name in the Eegister. In a good many cases the truth 'would, no 
doubt, be recorded; but, in some instances, I have reason to fear 
that false statements would be made, in order to screen the real 
offender, while in others the mother might, in good faith, report 
the wrong man. As the Eegistration Act at present stands, the 
registrar is debarred from inserting the name of the reputed father, 
unless he attends along with the mother, and they make a joint 
request to that effect ; and it is highly improbable that the Legisla- 
ture would consent to remove that important condition. 
See Fraser’s Laio of Parent and Child, p. 139. 
