for its own ends--be it professional pride, personal
glorification, hard cash, or revenge--is equally anxious to
find the evidence and establish a case. Of course, the police
are the first ones notified of the commission of a crime, but
as it is now almost universally their duty to inform at once
the coroner and also the district attorney thereof, a
tripartite race for glory frequently results which adds
nothing to the dignity of the administration of criminal
justice.

The coroner is at best no more than an appendix to the legal
anatomy, and frequently he is a disease. The spectacle of a
medical man of small learning and less English trying to
preside over a court of first instance is enough to make the
accused himself chuckle for joy.

Not long ago the coroners of New York discovered that, owing
to the fact that the district attorney or his representatives
generally arrived first at the scene of any crime, there was
nothing left for the "medicos" to do, for the district
attorney would thereupon submit the matter at once to the
grand jury instead of going through the formality of a hearing
in the coroner's court. The legal medicine men felt
aggrieved, and determined to be such early birds that no worm
should escape them. Accordingly, the next time one of them
was notified of a homicide he raced his horse down Madison
Avenue at such speed that he collided with a trolley car and
broke his leg.

Another complained to the district attorney that the