“But there are still other and stronger reasons for believing them so deposited, than any which I have as yet urged.  And, now, let me beg your notice to the highly artificial arrangement of the articles.  On the upper stone lay a white petticoat; on the second a silk scarf; scattered around, were a parasol, gloves, and a pocket-handkerchief bearing the name, ‘Marie Rogêt.’  Here is just such an arrangement as would naturally be made by a not over-acute person wishing to dispose the articles naturally.  But it is by no means a really natural arrangement.  I should rather have looked to see the things all lying on the ground and trampled under foot.  In the narrow limits of that bower, it would have been scarcely possible that the petticoat and scarf should have retained a position upon the stones, when subjected to the brushing to and fro of many struggling persons.  ’There was evidence,’ it is said, ’of a struggle; and the earth was trampled, the bushes were broken,’ — but the petticoat and the scarf are found deposited as if upon shelves.  ’The pieces of the frock torn out by the bushes were about three inches wide and six inches long.  One part was the hem of the frock and it had been mended.  They looked like strips torn off.’  Here, inadvertently, Le Soleil has employed an exceedingly suspicious phrase.  The pieces, as described, do indeed ‘look like strips torn off;’ but purposely and by hand.  It is one of the rarest of accidents that a piece is ‘torn off,’ from any garment such as is now in question, by the agency of a thorn.  From the very nature of such fabrics, a thorn or nail becoming entangled in them, tears them rectangularly — divides them into two longitudinal rents, at right angles with each other, and meeting at an apex where the thorn enters — but it is scarcely possible to conceive the piece ‘torn off.’  I never so knew it, nor did you.  To tear a piece off from such fabric, two distinct forces, in different directions, will be, in almost every case, required.  If there be two edges to the fabric — if, for example, it be a pocket- handkerchief, and it is desired to tear from it a slip, then, and then only, will the one force serve the purpose.  But in the present case the question is of a dress, presenting but one edge.  To tear a piece from the interior, where no edge is presented, could only be effected by a miracle through the agency of thorns, and no one thorn could accomplish it.  But, even where an edge is presented, two thorns will be necessary, operating, the one in two distinct directions, and the other in one.  And this in the supposition that the edge is unhemmed.  If hemmed, the matter is nearly out of the question.  We thus see the numerous and great obstacles in the way of pieces being ‘torn off’ through the simple agency of ‘thorns;’ yet we are required to believe not only that one piece but that many have been so torn.  ‘And one part,’ too, ’was the hem of the frock!’ Another piece was ’part of the skirt, not the