Identification of Persons and Things.
1. It is proposed in these pages to introduce the law and rules of identity of persons and things as a separate branch of the law of evidence. It has become a question of growing importance and one that is daily before the courts; perhaps the question of personal identification is now one of the greater importance, not only because the doctrine that the identity of name was evidence of identity of person, has measurably exploded, except in the examination of titles to real estate; but because of the great number of important cases of mistaken identity, both in civil and criminal practice, and in cases involving the identity of the living and the dead. Parties to actions, the ancestor and the heirs to estates questions of pedigree, marriages, births and deaths; questions of vendor and vendee, ancient records and documents, and parties thereto, and the degree of evidence necessary toe stablish them, and the doctrine of
idem sonans.