, the judge generally permits the report to be read, either
by the expert or by counsel. A copy of the report, together with the
documents in dispute are then usually handed to the jury for
examination. The expert may proceed to illustrate his point with the aid
of a blackboard and chalk, but much depends upon the attitude taken by
the judge and counsel. Some judges insist that the expert shall confine
himself to expressing his opinion, leaving counsel to deal with the
explanation and comparison; others give the expert every opportunity of
showing how he has arrived at his opinions.

The examination in chief is usually a very simple matter. The trouble
for the expert begins when counsel for the other side gets up to
cross-examine.

In nearly every case the object of the cross-examining counsel is to
ridicule the art and get the expert to admit the possibility of other
writers possessing the same peculiarities which are said to distinguish
the letters before the Court.

Counsel's favourite trick is to select some letter and ask the expert if
he is prepared to swear that he has never seen something just like it in
some other person's writing. The expert who knows his business will
insist on keeping well to the front the bedrock basis of handwriting
comparison, which is the application of the law of probability to
cumulative evidence. It is not a question whether some other person may
be in the habit of making a _t_ or a _k_ similar to those cited as
evidences of common origin, but whether it is probable that two persons
should make a dozen or more letters in precisely the same way under
similar conditions and exhibit precisely the same peculiarities of
style. He should reply with the unanswerable postulate that millions of
persons possess red hair, snub noses, a scar on the face, blue eyes,
bent fingers and a stammer; but it is millions to one against any two
persons possessing all six of those peculiarities.

In the course of his replies the expert may justifiably help his own
case by repeating, when opportunity occurs, such irrefutable axioms as,
No writer can say off-hand what peculiarities he may exhibit; that there
are scores of ways of dotting an _i_, or crossing a _t_, and that few
persons know which form they mostly affect. Fifty such points may be
gathered from this little volume alone, while acquaintance with the
works of other writers on caligraphy will supply ample ammunition for
meeting and repelling the