A fish a witness in a Court of justice.
--This rather startling incident actually occurred at the
Stafford Assizes lately, in the cause of
Timmons vs. the Birmingham and Stafford, shire Gas Company, in which the plaintiff sued the gas company for damages caused by them in allowing the ‘"tank gas water"’ from their gasometer to flow into the plaintiff's, well.
Dr. Letheby, the analytical chemist, and officer of health of the city of
London, being engaged as one of the scientific witnesses on the part of the gas company, he thought to prove that gas water could not have entered the plaintiff's well, because he found animalcule in the water.
Mr. W. M. Williams and
Mr. Bird, the chemical witnesses for the plaintiff suspecting that the learned doctor would advance the theory that animal life cannot exist in water tainted with gas, determined to give it a flat contradiction by producing in court a live fish, swimming in a mixture of half announce of the gas tank water with 25 ounces of pure water, having about the small and taste of the water in plaintiff's well.
Accordingly, a fine healthy gudgeon was caught in the river at
Stafford, put into a basin, the basin filled with the above mixture, and slipped under a seat in court, ready for the
Doctor, should he advance his theory, which upon his examination he soon did, asserting most positively that the least taint of gas in water would destroy animal life, when, to his evident surprise, and amid a general roar of laughter, in which the learned judge heartily joined, the basin, with the fish swimming in it, was lifted up and placed on the centre of the table, full in view of both judge and jury, and proving by his healthy movements that though the water was not agreeable, animal life was still possible in it. When the trial was over, which was in favor of the plaintiff, the fish was taken back to the river and returned to his ‘"native element,"’ none the worse for his short visit as a witness to the
Stafford Assizes.--
London Daily News. 
