quoted, and on p. 185 we also notice old rules referred to as though subsisting. On p. 123 it is said that in the case of Bailey v. Roberton the specification in question " was held bad for variance,' whereas a reference to the report, 3 App. Cas. p. 1080, will show that the House of Lords varied the judgment of the lower court, which had found disconformity between the specifications, and remitted the case back to the Court of Session in Scotland to do therein as shall be just and consistent with this variation and judgment.' Having seen statements in other textbooks similar to this, we suggest that they may be due to a hasty reading of Bailey v. Roberton as presented in the Abridgment of Patent Cases by the late Professor Goodeve. There are also many other topics on which observations suggested by a perusal of the book might be made, if their introduction within the limits of a review were feasible. Current ideas reflected in this work on combinations, claims, invention, mechanical and chemical equivalents, to mention some examples, require to be probed more deeply. This, however, is not the place to enter upon what might turn out to be a lengthy dissertation. In conclusion, we can recommend this work to those who are interested in patent law either as students or practitioners. Moreover to those, in particular, who already possess an older edition, we suggest the substitution of the present improved and modern treatise. Encyclopaedia of Local Government Law (Exclusive of the Metropolis). Edited by JOSHUA SCHOLEFIELD. Vol. II: Betterment' to 'District Councils.' London: Butterworth & Co., and Shaw & Sons. 1906. La. 8vo. lxxx and 535 pp. (258. net.) 6 THIS Volume does not disappoint the expectations roused by its predecessor. It contains many admirable short articles on such miscellaneous matters as Betterment' (a word which we must reluctantly accept as English), Bill-posting,' Beating the Bounds,' Bribery of Officials,' Census,' 'Church ways,' 'Public Clocks,' and 'Destructive Insects.' There are longer articles on 'Buildings,' 'Burial,' 'By-laws,' 'Commons,' 'Compensation,' Contracts,' 'County Councils,' The Crown,' 'Disorderly Houses,' and 'District Councils.' Every one of these articles is good in its way; but their ways differ. Thus Mr. Geoffrey Ellis has written well on Contracts of Corporate Bodies, but his style is somewhat diffuse. The Common Law rules may now since Lawford v. Billericay Rural Council [1903] 1 K. B. 772, be stated in a few lines, and it seems hardly necessary in a book of this kind to trace out the history of the controversy which was settled by that case. In striking contrast is Mr. Robertson's article on the Crown, which contains an immense amount of highly concentrated matter, somewhat in the form of a digest. There is also a want of uniformity as regards the extent to which historical matter is introduced. Thus in a short article on the creation of cities, the editor admirably summarizes the origin of cities; whereas an ingenuous reader of 'Charters of Incorporation' might suppose that no borough had ever been incorporated otherwise than by the machinery provided by the Municipal Corporations Act, 1882. So too it is in vain that we search for any description of a County or of its constitution earlier than the Local Government Act, 1888, by which that novelty, the administrative county, was created. The ancient county divisions still exist for some purposes, and do not merit the neglect with which they are treated. Little or no light is thrown on the nature of a County at large,' or on the peculiar constitution of such cities as Gloucester and Bristol, which were for some purposes separate counties long before county-boroughs were invented. Mr. Hill has a comprehensive article on by-laws. We do not quite appreciate his reasons for suggesting that recent cases have thrown doubts on the old rule that a by-law in restraint of trade is bad. The cases he cites are none of them instances of total restraint of trade. In Collins v. Corporation of Wells (1 Times L. R. 328) Lord Coleridge says, 'No doubt a by-law in restraint of trade is bad; but this by-law is only a partial restraint'—a distinction which has been recognized at least since 1721 (Fazerkerly v. Wiltshire, 1 Stra. 462); and we know of no case in which a by-law in restraint of trade has been held good. On the other hand the writer seems to state too generally that there is a power to regulate trade by by-laws. The cases he cites are cases in which the places where trading was regulated by by-laws were of a special character such as the foreshore over which the local authority had special statutory rights, or a market place, where the local authority had power as owners of the market to appropriate parts of the market place to the purposes of particular kinds of trade. Taken as a whole the articles in this volume attain a high level of accuracy and lucidity, and in the longer articles the orderly and systematic arrangement of the topics is highly praiseworthy. A Treatise on the Law of Master and Servant. By CHARLES MANLEY SMITH. The Sixth Edition by ERNEST MANLEY SMITH, with Notes on the Canadian Law, by A. C. FORSTER BOULTON, M.P. London : Sweet & Maxwell, Lim.; Toronto: The Carswell Co., Lim. 1906. Royal 8vo. xcvi and 823 pp. (308.) IN the course of a career of over fifty years Master Manley Smith's work (written by him in his leisure hours which the present abnormal condition of his profession has rendered more than usually numerous') has attained to its sixth edition, and it is therefore too late to comment on the general character and scope of the work. As far as the English law of the subject is concerned, the new edition seems to be similar to the last with the necessary additions, particularly the addition to the Appendix of seven recent statutes and one ancient one, which formerly appeared in the body of the work. The format of the whole has been made larger and more convenient. As to the general plan of the work we will only make these two observations, first, is it worth while to print a large appendix (some 300 pages) of statutes unless they are fully annotated? If the scope of the work does not admit of such annotation, would it not be better to leave the practitioner to refer to the works which are particularly concerned with such statutes? Secondly, is it worth while to deal in the body of the work with a subject like combinations amongst masters and workmen, if only eight pages can be devoted to it, and, if it is worth while, why is it not equally worth while to deal with the Workmen's Compensation Act, 1897? We notice one or two important recent cases which ought to have been inserted, namely, Boyle v. Smith [1906] 1 K. B. 432, and Tozeland v. West Ham Union [1906] 1 K. B. 538. These cases, though not then reported in the Law Reports, were decided some time before the date which is appended to the preface to the book, and had been reported elsewhere. A later case than either of these, Williams v. North's Navigation Collieries (1889), Lim., in the House of Lords, is duly referred to in the Index, though not in the body of the work. The important new feature of the present edition is the Canadian law contributed by Mr. Forster Boulton. This, so far as we are competent to judge, seem to be full and accurate, except that it is not altogether up to date. The references to the Supreme Court Reports seem to end with volume 34, somewhere in 1904, though there have been two volumes published since. Neither do we observe any references to the Territories Law Reports. But the addition adds to the value of the book, which still remains a standard work on its subject. The Law relating to Land Purchase in Ireland. By R. A. WALKER, assisted by E. C. FARRAN. Dublin: Hodges, Figgis & Co., Lim. 1906. xvii and 623 pages. (218. net.) THIS, the latest book on the complicated and difficult subject of the law relating to Land Purchase in Ireland, will be found of great assistance by solicitors, landlords, land-agents, and others who have to carry out the operations which transform a tenant into a proprietor under the Land Act of 1903. The Introduction is full and clear, and states the principles underlying the Land Purchase Acts; it traces the various steps and specifies the different documents required to complete a transaction between landlord and tenant under the Act of 1903, beginning with the calculations' by a vendor or purchaser before the bargain, and ending with the final allocation of the purchase money by the Judicial Commissioner after the completion of the contract. All the statutes and sections of statutes relating to Land Purchase in Ireland are set out in full, and the work thus comprises the entire Land Purchase Code. There are also several forms useful to solicitors, agents, and others, with a list of all authorized investments for the purchase money under the Acts. Extracts from the report of the Estates Commissioners, which further point out the working of the Act, are given with a table showing the average number of years' purchase obtained in the various counties in Ireland. All the rules relating to Land Purchase both in the Court of the Land Judge and in the Land Commission are set out in full. The notes to the various sections of the Acts of 1903 and 1904 are full and explain clearly and concisely the effect of the sections with which they deal. For instance, the notes to section 13 of the Act of 1903, which deals with the important subjects of sporting rights and minerals, give a summary of the law relating to sporting rights which will be found very instructive; again, the notes to section 17 of the Act, which specifies the persons with whom the Land Commission may deal as owners, are very full and form a summary of the law relating to the powers of married women, infants, and lunatics to sell under the Land Purchase Acts. There is one signal defect in this book, from the point of view of a lawyer called upon to advise on points of law arising upon the construction of the Acts, and that is the omission to refer to all the decided cases under the Acts. Several cases which should have been noticed have been overlooked or perhaps considered unworthy of notice, and other works on the subject of Land Purchase contain many cases which the authors considered material but to which the authors of the present book have omitted to refer. This defect, however, will not interfere with the usefulness of the book to those persons for whom it is primarily intended. Notable Scottish Trials. WILLIAM ROUGHEAD. 343 pp. (58. net.) Edited by 8vo. The Trial of Dr. Pritchard. THE art of advocacy can be learned only by studying it from the life, with ears and eyes intent upon some actual forensic contest. Yet such. study may be very profitably supplemented by the perusal of printed reports of famous trials, where the eliciting or the marshalling or the criticizing of the evidence has presented greater difficulties than have to be surmounted in everyday litigation. The publication of the modern series of State Trials has now made several such reports accessible at a cheap price; but many readers will desire to get beyond the narrow range of constitutional law into examples more closely connected with ordinary life. Messrs. Sweet and Maxwell are therefore doing well in undertaking the issue of a series of carefully prepared reports of important Scottish trials; and we shall be glad if its success should warrant them in extending their plan to England and Ireland. The volume before us tells the story of a crime of forty years ago which taught insurance offices how easy it is for a medical man to make away with inmates of his own household. Pritchard's two victims were his wife and his mother-in-law; and they met their death whilst the one was undergoing medical treatment at his hands, and the other was engaged in nursing her. The peculiar atrocity of his conduct was heightened by the fact that there existed no serious motive for either murder. He had the skill and the callousness to protract the poisoning of his wife through several months, with such slowness as to give her illness all the appearance of being natural. Hence he would probably have escaped detection had he not complicated matters by also poisoning her mother, and doing it less gradually. The cynical hypocrisy of the physician who, whilst apparently amiable and even affectionate, could thus do to death under his own roof two women of his own family, presents to the student of human nature a striking ethical problem. But the interest of this trial is not merely ethical; both the bar and the bench gave useful lessons in the course of it. Inglis, who in Madeleine Smith's case had exhibited extraordinary skill as a prisoner's counsel, showed in trying Pritchard his powers as a judge. The lawstudent will find the ever-present question of the evidentiary value of motive discussed from three points of view (pp. 231, 243, 288). He will see how an able advocate, when unable to dispute the fact that crime has been committed, may approach (pp. 252, 262) the delicate task of suggesting the possible guilt of another person who has had the same opportunities as the prisoner whom he is defending. And in view of the conflicts which medical men, both in England and in France, have recently found may still arise between the obligations of professional secrecy and the denunciatory duties of a citizen, it is important to notice the emphatic language of the Lord Justice-Clerk Inglis. When he found that a physician had suspected that poisoning was going on and yet had held his tongue, he reminded him (p. 283) that 'there is a rule of life far higher than professional etiquette-a duty that every right-minded man owes to his neighbour-to prevent the destruction of human life.' The editor of the volume has done his work energetically; not contenting himself with reproducing the best report he could find, but collating it with others. He has even taken the trouble of inducing some distinguished witnesses 'to revise the evidence given by them at the trial'; but the editors of the future volumes of the series will be well advised if they avoid the excessive zeal which set this rather dangerous precedent. He has done better service by writing an excellent introductory narrative, which summarizes the whole story very clearly. And he has added several useful appendices; as well as various pictures, the usefulness of some of which may be questioned. It is important that books of this class should be differentiated as markedly as possible from literature of the type of the 'penny dreadfuls'; and one step in this direction is to keep them free from any undignified engravings that have no value except to gratify a curiosity that is morbid or at best puerile. We have also received: Third A History of English Legal Institutions. By A. T. CARTER. Edition. London: Butterworth & Co. 1906. 8vo. viii and 304 pp.— This book has been much improved since its first appearance, and in the third edition may be recommended as an excellent general introduction to the history of English Courts, their jurisdictions and their process. Students ought to be grateful to Mr. Carter for giving them clear information on the rather outlying matters which were formerly difficult to find in any one place, such as the exceptional position of clerics and Jews in the Middle Ages. In a future edition Mr. Carter will perhaps be induced to go a little out of his way for the reader's convenience, and, having got the Jews out of England, add a few sentences to explain when and how they came back. No criticism in detail occurs to us except the very slight one that in one or two places the style of Queen's Bench Division' has by inadvertence remained unaltered. We should like to see a few more specific references to the original authorities for the benefit of apt learners. The Law of Corporate Executors and Trustees. By ERNEST KING Allen. London: Stevens & Sons, Lim. 1906. 8vo. XV and 93 pp.-This is an interesting little volume, written because, as the author states in his preface, no text-book at present exists upon the subject, nor has any writer so far devoted attention to it.' The law relating to corporationtrustees or trustee-companies has not, in fact, yet become sufficiently prominent or important in England to require special treatment; this is one of the points in which the British dominions beyond the seas have rather taken the lead. Strange to say Mr. Allen has not drawn upon Colonial cases or statutes for analogies which might well serve to construct authority.' If the next edition is to be written for the use of lawyers, a different method of citing cases should be adopted. The Spirit of our Laws. London: Sweet & Maxwell, Lim. Toronto: The Carswell Co., Lim. 1906. 8vo. xi and 299 pp. (58. net.)—The author believes that it is the only book in English which endeavours to describe in popular language for laymen the whole fabric of our legal institutions.' We think the statement would be made more exact by reading 'practice' for 'institutions'; but, subject to that amendment, we think the author has not only made a laudable endeavour of which the difficulty can be realized only by those who have attempted something of the same kind themselves, and has made it in the right way, but has been to a great extent successful. We are not sure that his expressed desire to be useful to law |