CURIOUSLY CAUGHT CRIMINALS.
IN the annals of crime, truth is often stranger than fiction, and there is no doubt that these contain many strange rec ords of crime and its detection which beat anything that has come from the fertile brains of the most imaginative writers of detective stories. In this age, science plays an important part, and those deeply versed in its mysteries are frequently called on to lend the aid of their knowledge to assist the ends of justice. The microscope has been often used to decide whether spots of blood on clothing or other things were really human blood or not, and the immensely more delicate test of the spectroscope has been able to decide in like case where the microscope has failed. An other curious use has been made of the mi croscope in the detection of crime. It has shown that human hairs have a marked in dividuality, and, not long ago, a single hair — the evidence in a murder case — was shown to a microscopist with the request to determine whether it was from the head of the suspected man, whose hair was of the same color. The specialist found, after careful consideration, that it was sufficiently unlike to acquit him. Subsequently the real culprit was captured, and his hairs were found to be identical in character with the one first examined. A somewhat similar case occurred at San Francisco. There had been a sensational murder, a young lady having been stabbed by a Sunday-school superintendent named Durant, and there were produced at the trial a few hairs from a horse's mane, which had been found on the victim's clothing. These were carefully measured by a delicate micrometer, and found to correspond exactly in diameter with the hairs of Durant's horse, while measurements of hairs from twentyother horses gave different results. It was testified by Durant's stableman that
his master had driven the horse on the day the crime was committed, and that he stood near the animal examining him for some time before getting into his roadwagon. An important work on dentistry published a short time ago contained some remarkable instances of the identification of criminals by peculiarities in their teeth. In one case, a man was attacked on a lonely highroad, and in the tussle he, in his frantic efforts to get rid of his assailant, bit him on the left hand, while his little dog took a mouthful of the man's calf. • The ruffian was finally forced to take to his heels. The police were duly informed, and ten days later a suspi cious character was arrested, but denied every thing, and as the night of the assault was a very dark one, he could not be identified by his looks. But there was a small wound on his left hand which looked like the mark of a tooth. It was not, the accused stolidly maintained. The victim of the attack sug gested that if it was the same man he ought to have the marks of the terrier's teeth on his leg. Three tiny wounds were found on his calf, which he ascribed to the bite of a large dog. The terrier's teeth were, how ever, found to match the wounds exactly, and conviction followed. A man accused of murder had wounds on two of the fingers of his right hand, which had been evidently caused by peculiarly shaped human teeth. The murdered man's teeth were found to correspond, and there was conviction in due course. A -rich Russian banker had been discov ered murdered in his house in St. Peterburg. There was no clue, but in the room there was found a cigar mouthpiece containing part of a cigar of such an expensive kind that it was supposed the banker himself had been smoking it just before the crime had been committed. On close examination, the
