The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-10-23
QUEER PROBLEMS OF LAW.
Cases With Which English Judges ant

Cases With Wnlcn EHSllSH JudSSS anu
 Lawyers Have Struggled, Hundreds of years of test cases have not yet elucidated all the possible points of difficulty in the English law.
 Here is a resemblance problem with which the Blackburn lawyers have just been confronted: An English gen. tleman had twin sons who were born within a few minutes of each other. 1 He made 8 will that his property in Australia should go to whichever of l the two sons arrived at the age of 21 1 first.
 The younger of the two emigrated to Australia. while the other one re- nlained in England, and the former was still in the Ant!podes at the time of his coming of age. Now, Australian | time is some hours in advance of l Greenwich, and therefore, the young man out there was 21 before his elder brother at home. Which of these two brothers is legally entitled to the property? The question has not yet been decided, and in the meantime readers may exercise their own acu- men upon it.
 Are eggs eggs, or are only hens eggs .egges? This may seem q rIdicu- fous question. but nice shades of meaning are involved, and a case which turned upon it went through two or three courts of Jaw. A lady Isent an order for a dozen eggs to a
 dairyman and he sent her ducks eggs She, sent them back as not being what she ordered but he refused to take them. She. in turn. declined to keep them, and some time eapsing between their journey from the house to the shop, the egg went bad, and eventu- tually the shopkeeper sued the lady for h1s Cd, their value.
 The Count Court judge ordered her to pay, declaring that ducks eggs were as much eggs as any others; but the lady appealed, nd Kings Bench reversed the decision on the ground that when a partly ordered eggs hens eggs were meant, and if any other con- tention were admitted any kind of eggs might be sent, such as pigeons canaries' or even rattlesnakes. Ducks eggs, it was decided. were not eggs in the ordinary meaning the term.
 Are the grandchildren of man also his children In the legal sense this question is not so absurd as it looks, and some time ago it was seriously and laboriousy contended in the courts that according to act of Parliament they were.
 The particular act in question, passed in the reign of the late Queen Victoria, laid it down that ''the father and the grandfather, the mother and l the grandmother and the children of any poor person, being of sufficient ability, shall relieve and maintain any such poor person." The argument was that according 1 to the context, grandchildren were to be reckoned as children for this pur- pose. just as grandparents were reck- oned as parents. On the other side 1 it was argued that if grandchildren were children then great-grandchiI- dren were children also, and that a man might in this way be called upon to support his father and mother his -four grandparents, his eight great grandparents, and as many grand children as he might be lucky or un- lucky to possess.
 Is skinned milk? A man. asked for a glass of milk to drink and wss given skinned milk and the purveyor was fined for it; but in higher court the decision was reversed, it being contended at the time that skilnmed milk was really much more milk than milk that was not skinned, since the latter contained something that was not milk at-all that is, cream.-Tid- | Bits