no food taken by the visible mouth would
satisfy.

Ancestors of Miss Biffin we can more literally
believe in. A man of forty lived in Paris not
long before Doctor Schenck made his collection
of cases, who, being without arms, could grasp an
axe with his shoulders, neck, and chin, and throw
it as far as his neighbours, or in the same way
hold and crack a whip with the best of them.
Although he had no hands to keep from picking
and stealing, he was eventually condemned for
theft, and broken on the wheel. He used his toes,
it is said, for eating and drinking. Dion tells
that one of the gifts sent to Augustus from the
Indians was a youth without arms, who used his
feet skilfully in shooting with the bow. Schenck
himself saw an armless woman doing needlework
with her feet, and Cardan saw an armless
man throw a spear, stitch a garment, eat,
drink, write, and thread a needle. Two youths
with the same defect played cards (but not
together), one using his feet, the other his
mouth and chin. An armless woman at
Frank-fort-on-the-Maine in 'fifteen fifty-six not only
painted letters elegantly with her feet, but
made with her toes very ingenious toys.

A famous armless humpback was Thomas
Schweicker, a Suabian, born in 1545, whose
portrait we have at the age of fifty-three.
He was the Biffin of Schenck's time, in highest
repute for handwriting—or, shouldn't we
say, footwriting?—with his toes, and for the
elegant designs which he drew round specimens
of his penmanship. He excelled also in
arithmetic and chess-playing, architectural
carvings, delicate cutting out, bookbinding,
crossbow shooting. He cut for himself his
slices of bread with his feet, carried food and
drink to his mouth, and with his feet also
mended his own pens when he wrote. A
hundred years earlier there had been a man living
to old age, under the care of his landlord, who
had learnt to be very helpful to himself, though
he had no right hand, three fingers joined
together for a left hand, and no toes upon his
feet. He learnt to write well, and do many
things with his misshapen and imperfect left
hand.

From the people without feet we pass to
the records of joint births like that of the
Siamese Twins. Some have been joined by the
neck, some by the forehead, some by the chest,
some by the back; there are plenty of all
kinds. The most interesting of these was a
man of adult years, who, in 1519, showed
himself in Switzerland with another and smaller
body hanging from his breast, alive and
complete in all parts from the neck downwards;
but the head, if there was any, seemed to be
contained within his chest. He bared his
chest and displayed what seemed to be a living
child, which had forced its head through it.
The rest of Dr. Schenck's collection we will
leave to the imagination of any one who,
having brought himself into a state of
temporary lunacy, will confine himself for six
weeks to a diet of pork chops. For, after
winding up the catalogue of human monsters,
with a creature very like a libelled and
caricatured harpy, he gives his mind to the
monstrosities of brutes.

WHERE TO PUT THE LAW COURTS?

WHEN Sir George Lewis's committee,
appointed in 1858 to consider the question of the
new Law Courts, made their report in favour
of what is now known as the Carey-street site,
the question appeared to be settled, and the
destination of the Palace of Justice of the future
to be finally determined; indeed, the selection
at that time was universally approved, and the
committee were considered to have chosen the
best of the three alternatives submitted to them.
The objections both to the Westminster and
Lincoln's-inn sites, were sufficiently grave to
leave either but few advocates; and, although
it was even then admitted that the Strand and
Carey-street block scarcely fulfilled all the
conditions that might have been exacted, it was so
clearly better than the other positions proposed,
that the public readily agreed with the decision
of the committee.

Matters of this sort do not usually move
rapidly in this land of How Not To Do It,
and accordingly it was not until 1865, or seven
years after the appointment of the selection
committee, that Parliament passed the Acts
giving powers of compulsory purchase, and
finding funds for the purpose. The suitors'
fees fund was justly held to be public money,
available for the great national purpose
contemplated; and by appropriations from that
fund the new Law Courts are to be built. The
question of the cost of site and buildings now
gave rise to much discussion, and Parliament
was extremely desirous of seeing its way to
some satisfactory estimate of the expenditure
to be sanctioned by the Acts proposed. A lively
recollection of the remarkable discrepancy
between the estimates for, and the actual cost of,
their own house, and, for that matter, of most
other great public works in London, no doubt
caused Parliament to dwell with particular
care on this point; but the means devised to
gain the end required were, to say the least,
highly remarkable. By the Acts as they were
ultimately passed, the powers for compulsory
purchase were to remain in abeyance, until a
certificate had been furnished by the
commissioners that they had received satisfactory
evidence that the probable cost of the lands and
buildings would be covered by a million and a
half of money. The commissioners, receiving
a certificate from a well-known architect to the
desired effect, and probably thinking a million
and a half a tolerably respectable sum, expressed
themselves satisfied that the work could be
satisfactorily done for such sum, and, being then
possessed of full powers, set vigorously to work.

The area chosen, comprised every kind of
neighbourhood. Along the Strand, respectable
old-established shops were the rule,
diversified by not more than the usual proportion
of public-houses. If the entrance courts