Page 8 Advertisements Column 2

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 172, 12 June 1940, Page 8

NOSE PRINTS The use of noseprin ts for identifying sheep is now being discussed seriously in Scuth Africa, and it might have been of great importance in English courts in the bad old days when sheep-stealing was a capital offence, and questions of identity must sometimes have arisen, states Lucia, of the Manchester Guardian. The oddest case in regard to the Identity of sheep was one in which the prisoner might have been saved had his counsel, or "friend" in the old parlance, been content -with the proposition that one sheep is verj r much like another. The case was heard by Baron Alderson at Chelmsford. The prisoner was accused of stealing sheep, and the prosecution relied on the point that the bones of the sheep were found buried in his garden. Eminent counsel had been engaged for the defence and, although the prosecution had admitted that the discovery was not conclusive, he was not content to get his client off by pleading tlytt one sheep is very like another, and that there was no evidence identifying the remains. He put up an elaborate argu inent to the effect that the sheep had committed suicide by rubbing its neck against a sharp edge in the old hurdles. ,: Go on," said Aklerson, "you must now show that it skinned itself, buried its body or what was left of It in the prisoner's garden, and covered itself up in its own grave."