diction compared to those of our forefathers. Cheap and free education is at the root of nearly all our costly litigation,' &c., &c. The criticism which is directed against the wording of the letters patent is both literal and historical. With much labouring, the author contends that the clauses require redrafting, both from a legal and syntactical point of view. The author's attitude may be inferred from his criticism of a particular clause in the grant, concerning which he says (p. 113), 'Thus a prostituted meaning has been brought about by unappreciative amendment and the practice of office-like copying.'

It is not easy to recognize the class of 'critical student' to whom the pages are suitable. To place the book in the hands of a beginner can hardly have been intended, while to present it to the advanced student might as much court criticism as impart instruction. It is probable that many of the conclusions, and much of the argument, would have been varied if there had been further research into the law and history of the subjects with which the clauses of the patent deal. But as long as the cases in the Court stand as precedents and the law remains uncodified, the exact wording of the grant is of little importance. Indeed, it might be asserted with some degree of truth that ‘Edward VII, by the Grace of God' might, with the date and seal, sandwich a bedding of etceteras enclosing the title of the invention, and the patentee, so far as his protection was concerned, would be but little the worse. However this may be, the advanced student may, perhaps, usefully peruse the book on the chance that some aspect of the matter here presented has previously escaped his attention.

London: Stevens & (78. 6d.)

The Law of Wills. By A. GUEST MATHEWS. Haynes. 1908. 8vo. xxxv and 376 pp. THIS work is written primarily for students. It contains a lucid explanation of the rules and doctrines relating to the law of wills and is comprehensive enough for Honours students. It is arranged in numerous chapters, each chapter containing some familiar heading which will enable the reader readily to find the subject he wants. The symmetry of the work is, however, by no means perfect. For instance, the question of testamentary capacity is dealt with after the formalities and form of a will, and it is discussed under the negative heading of objections to the validity of a will. Residuary gifts are treated of before particular legacies and annuities.

The work will also be useful to practitioners for occasional reference on account of its lucid exposition of many of the equitable doctrines of construction, such as conversion, reconversion, satisfaction, &c. These doctrines are indeed made rather too prominent for a student's purposes: he is more likely to seek them in his textbooks on equity. On the other hand, he will miss the usual chapter on death duties appropriately found in other students' books on Wills. The author has expressed the law as to words of futurity in a will very clearly, his statement that the ordinary meaning of the words used must govern the construction showing a recognition of a judicial tendency which has latterly become even more marked, and which has received recent confirmation from the words of the Master of the Rolls in In re Cope, Cross v. Cross [1908] 2 Ch. 1.

Deeds Registration: A Treatise on the Law of Registration of Documents affecting Land under the Registration of Deeds Acts of Australasia, with references to analogous Statutes and Cases on them in England, Ireland, Canada, West Indies, Ceylon, Straits Settlements, &c. By JAMES EDWARD HOGG. London: Stevens & Sons, Lim.; Sydney: The Law Book Company of Australasia, Lim.; Melbourne: Charles F. Maxwell (G. Partridge & Co.). xxix and 172 pp. THIS book is by the author of several well-known books on registration of title. It contains an account of the law as to registration of deeds in Australasia, i. e. the six states of the commonwealth of Australia, the Dominion of New Zealand, the crown Colony of Fiji, and the territory of Papua. It is hardly possible for an English lawyer to criticize the statements contained in this book as to Australasian law, but we may say that they are stated very clearly.

The book is, however, interesting to an English lawyer owing to the very useful disquisitions on the English and Irish Registry Acts. The author suggests that as the Australasian decisions are founded on the common law and case-law used in the English Courts, modified only by local statutes, they may be accepted as valuable judicial opinions, not necessarily authoritative.

The discussion of the effect of notice of an unregistered assurance, at p. 87 et seq. will be found valuable by an English lawyer; see a collection of cases as to what amounts to notice at p. 101 et seq.

The English practitioner has often to prepare powers of attorney to be used in the Colonies. At p. 42 will be found a valuable collection of enactments relating to, and a discussion of, the method and effect of registering a power of attorney in each of the Australasian colonies. The practical conclusion at which we arrive is that if a power of attorney is given in this country to do an act in more than one of the Australasian colonies, or in one of them and in some other country, it will be prudent to execute more than one copy of the power so as to enable an original to be produced, and, apparently in some colonies, to be left at the office for registration. It will also be necessary to inspect the Acts as to registration, &c., in the colony in which the power is to be exercised, for the purpose of seeing if any special provisions ought to be inserted.

The Law of Tender. By GEORGE LUCAS BEYNON HARRIS. London: Butterworth & Co. 1908. La. 8vo. lxx and 374 + [42] pp. (218. net.)

If there is any person but the reviewer who reads the 'Introductory Remarks' of modern textbooks, he will experience a new and unexpected pleasure on opening Mr. Harris's volume. One can imagine with what relish he will read that Tender, then, is one of those radiant gems of elemental justice which, drawn from the rude primordial judicatures of Barbarism, gleam with augmented lustre in the polished jural systems of the cosmic periods of law.' That 'It will be found to overwhelm the complacency of the usurer, and its trail to intersect at innumerable angles the stony domain of Interlocutory Procedure,' or that clothed with a mantle spun upon the delicate loom of equity, it will be found to shield the distressful mortgagor from the bleak and pestilent blasts of the mortgagee in possession.' How inspiriting will he find Mr. Harris's picture of the 'Praetor Peregrinus, groping with seer-like sagacity through an exogenous mass of material ... presciently' perceiving the necessity of developing the

Convention, and finally advancing with timorous apprehension... towards the greatest of his reforms.' These are but some of the gems which will cause him to bless the kindly insistence of a distinguished member of the Bar' and the 'suit of importance' which were respectively the ' causa causans' and the ' causa sine qua non' of the publication of Mr. Harris's work.

When Mr. Harris comes to grips with his subject he writes (save for an occasional flash) much like any other text writer, and, except where he is dealing with equitable doctrines, his work is careful and complete. His statement of equitable principles is apt to be misleading. Thus on p. 92 he cites Ravald v. Russell (Younge 9) and Prout v. Cock [1896] 2 Ch. 808 in support of the proposition that the remainderman or reversioner may redeem a mortgage on the freehold, without stating the limitations imposed on this right by the right of option of the owner of the particular estate. At the bottom of the same page occurs an observation that interest due upon a mortgage of money which is in settlement, will not be considered as in the nature of rent,' to which it is difficult to attribute any definite meaning.

Again Mr. Harris has not a very clear conception of the effect of section 17 of the Trustee Act, 1893, and section 56 of the Conveyancing Act, 1881, and the rather difficult cases that have been decided on those sections. King v. Smith [1900] 2 Ch. 425 did not decide, as he suggests at p. 107, that the person tendering must 'assume that the solicitor producing the deed, is acting as solicitor for the person legally entitled to give a discharge for the money,' though Farwell J. indicated obiter his belief that this was the correct view. The dictum of North J. in Day v. Woolwich &c. Society, 40 Ch. D. 491 is quite as strong the other way, and is on p. 117 apparently accepted by Mr. Harris, for he there states that the solicitor who produces the deed (under s. 56) must be in fact acting for the person who has signed the receipt. He must also, according to Mr. Harris, be specially authorized to accept the Tender'; a proposition which is only true of a solicitor appointed by trustees under the Trustee Act, 1893, s. 17 (Hetling and Merton's Contract [1893] 3 Ch. 269). On p. 252, it would be more correct to say that acts of Part Performance, to take an agreement out of the operation of the Statute of Frauds, must be referable to an agreement, not necessarily to the agreement. The statement on p. 261 that a set of trustees' may legally delegate their duties to one or more of their number' is, to say the least of it, excessively wide, and is in no way borne out by Lee v. Sankey, L. R. 15 Eq. 204, which Mr. Harris quotes in support.

The book is well indexed and arranged, but there are a considerable number of misprints, no less than five, exempli gratia, in the quotation from Lat. 109 on p. 19.

On the whole the volume should be useful, though it comprises a good many subjects which have little or no connexion with one another in principle and are already sufficiently dealt with in works on the branches of law to which they more properly belong.

Southampton Record Society. Leet Jurisdiction in England, especially as illustrated by the Records of the Court Leet of Southampton. By F. J. C. HEARNSHAW. Southampton: Cox & Sharland. 1908. xv and 406 pp.

THIS bulky volume unfolds the mysteries of an important local tribunal, and fills a gap in our knowledge of institutional history. In the first part

the author examines the leet in legal theory and depicts the ideal standard of leet jurisdiction set up by the lawyers'; in the second part he deals with the leet in practice, especially as illustrated by the records of Southampton from the sixteenth century onward; in the third and last part, which is very brief (pp. 327-58), he gives a survey of the history of leet jurisdiction. This subdivision of the matter into three parts is bewildering, and necessitates many cross-references and repetitions. A simple chronological treatment, with fewer headings and subheadings, would have enabled the author to compress the results of his investigations into a less unwieldy and more readable volume.

In rejecting Maitland's theory that the sheriff's tourn originated in the Assize of Clarendon, he says, 'the position which I have ultimately felt bound to take is that the Assize of Clarendon marks, not an increase, but a diminution of the sheriff's power' (p. v); yet this view does not appear to be incompatible with the acceptance of Maitland's theory. In fact, Mr. Hearnshaw does not throw much new light on the origin of the tourn and the leet, though he presents some novel conclusions regarding the early relation of the presentment jurors to the capital pledges. Einfassen ' for Einsassen' (p. 20, n. 7) makes a German citation unintelligible, and the reference to the title of Gneist's book, from which the citation was taken, is wrong. The statement that many charters of Richard I and John exempted burgesses from the sheriff's tourn (p. 18) is misleading, for most of these charters merely exempted the burgesses from pleading outside the walls of the borough, and none of them specifically mentions the sheriff's tourn. But the monograph as a whole exhibits a high grade of scholarship, and will doubtless be accepted as the standard work on leet jurisdiction. It may be of interest to note that a history of the frankpledge system, which supplements Mr. Hearnshaw's study, especially as regards the medieval period, has recently been presented as a doctor's thesis at Harvard University, and is now being put into shape for publication.

The Law in General Medical Practice: some Chapters in Everyday Forensic Medicine. By STANLEY B. ATKINSON, M.B., B.Sc., Barrister-at-Law. London: Henry Frowde, Oxford University Press. 1908. 8vo. viii and 233 PP.

ANYTHING from the pen of such an authority on Medical Law as Dr. Stanley B. Atkinson should ensure its favourable reception by the medical and legal professions. In 'The Law in General Medical Practice' Dr. Atkinson fills up many gaps left in the student's forensic knowledge when he finally reaches the fully-fledged state: for which reason, the work before us may be perused with equal benefit both by the student and the practitioner of medicine. It should be no less useful to the lawyer seeking light in medico-legal questions. It has been said that, after qualifying, a medical man begins to learn something about his profession and, although this statement must be read sarcastic,' still, it is a fact that the conduct of many of the smaller, less important, everyday duties which fall to the lot of the busy practitioner, has often to be learned by him by unpleasant experience. And in no portion of his profession is this more true than in the medico-legal and medico-ethical branches. It is largely with these everyday experiences that Dr. Atkinson deals.

The first chapter of this useful little work gives hints as to the ethical relations subsisting between doctor and clergyman, doctor and family, &c.: details the privileges and duties of a medical man: gives advice on his relations towards various public officials, and ends up with useful details on the method of examining a patient in cases where medical evidence may subsequently be required.

Chapters ii and iii deal with medical evidence, and medical certificates and reports, and will repay careful reading. The law of defamation as affecting the medical practitioner is well and clearly set out in chapter iv; whilst Negligence and Malpractice' is of special importance in these days when every patient considers himself in a position to criticize his doctor's supposed lack of skill or want of attention.

The chapter entitled 'Some difficult Clinical Occasions' contains valuable matter on such vexed subjects as the 'definition of drunkenness '; 'GoodHealth '-in relation to declarations in proposals for life-assurance; the medico-legal aspect of 'Hypnotism'; the conduct of the medical attendant in suspected cases of poisoning, &c., &c.

An excellent bibliography of recent medico-legal literature, and an index to cases cited, ends a very readable and useful little work, which we can recommend alike to the qualified and to the unqualified medical man and the legal practitioner.

A Summary of the Law of Companies. By T. EUSTACE SMITH. Edition by the Author, assisted by W. A. BEWES.

Tenth

London: Stevens

& Haynes. 1908. xxi and 321 pp. (78. 6d.)-The ninth edition of this work, which was published in 1907, was by the author and Mr. Arthur Stiebel, and the name of the latter appears on the cover of the tenth edition, although it is not on the title-page. The fact that a new edition has so soon followed the last previous one speaks well for the usefulness and popularity of the work, but the passing of the Companies Act, 1907, necessitated the re-writing of parts of the book. Mr. Smith has included in the new edition a chapter on limited partnerships. Like many other writers he expresses the opinion that it will usually be found more easy to work a business as a private company than as a limited partnership.' F. E. The Companies Acts, 1862-1907. By WILLIAM GODDEN and STAMFORD HUTTON. London: Effingham Wilson. 1908. x and 428 pp. (58. net.) This is a reprint of the Companies Acts and of some other enactments relating to companies, together with the revised Table A, the Windingup Rules, 1903, and some regulations of the Board of Trade. The Companies Acts will shortly be consolidated into one statute, and it might appear at first sight that the book under review was unnecessary. As a matter of fact it will be most useful to those who have to deal with the bill now before Parliament when it becomes law, for the authors of the book have given excellent cross-references, in their notes to the various sections, to other provisions of the Acts. No authorities are cited, but these can be found in other books which are at the elbows of most lawyers. It should be added that the sections of the earlier Acts show the amendments in them which have been made by later statutes, and that the Act of 1907 is so typed as to show the alteration made by it in the law as laid down by the Act of 1900.

F. E.

By G. F. EMERY. (2s. 6d. net.)—

Laws relating to Foreigners and Foreign Corporations. London: Effingham Wilson. 1908. xi and 157 pp. Section 35 of the Companies Act, 1907, requires every company incor

VOL. XXIV.

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