en rise to an Emmet's operation, Battey's or Hegar's operation, an Alexander's operation, etc. The reviews and journals speak of them and praise them, so that a gynæcologist who has no "cases" to produce is little thought of. In the same strain M. Vernuil criticised other measures recently in vogue, and hinted that most of them would in process of time become as disregarded as the once prevailing fashion of an iridectomy preliminary to cataract extraction. 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, "How many patients have been cured thereby? How many have derived any benefit whatever from those terrible undertakings? Barely tea per cent For these I admit that the operation has been of service, but for the ninety others can its abuse be denied? Given 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 series, twenty-five at least were superfluous,"
Mediæval 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, fur 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 Englishman; and they took care that this should not be an easy thing to prove. In Gloucestershire, where these trials took place, three witnesses had to be produced, two on the father's and one on the mother's side. No woman's testimony was admitted. Consequently, in a great many cases, where probably 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 commission of the offense seem to have had the privilege of declining to be tried, when they enjoyed the possibility of escaping punishment. One John do 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 released on bail, while the others should be 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 value 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 assessed. "William Miel fell down dead as he drove the plough of Richard Sarg, his master, and Richard Witepirie, 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 arc a deodand, and are to go to the house of Llantony." The power of levying deodands gave opportunities for abuse, which, with other opportunities of a similar tendency, the sheriffs were not slow of improving to their own profit.
Salt Lakes of the Murghab 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
