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THE CENTRAL LAW JOURNAL. 427

BOOK NOTICES.
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BOOKS RECEIVED.- Markby's Elements of Law. Mac-
million & Co., New York; Supplement to same. Macmillan
& Co., New York.-- Burrill on Assignments, Baker, Voorhis
& Co., New York.-- Wharton on Evidence, 2 vols., Kay &
Bro., Philadelphia.-- Wisconsin Reports. Vol. 40. Callag-
han & Co., Chicago.-- Leading Cases on Mines, Minerals
and Mining Water Rights. Summer, Whitney & Co., San
Francisco.-- Sawyer's Reports. Vol. 3. A. L. Bancroft &
Co., San Francisco.

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INSTITUTES OF COMMON AND STATUTE LAW- BY JNO.
B. MINOR, L.L. D., Professor of Common Law in
the University of Virginia. Richmond, 1876. Vol-
umes I and II.

The second volume has been printed during the
present year. The first volume treats of the rights
which concern or relate to the person; the second, of
rights which relate to things real. Volume III will
treat of the rights which relate to things personal, and
volume IV of the remedies for wrongs. The two re-
maining volumes are to be published, as the author tell
us, at an early day. The general division of the
law, it will be seen, corresponds with that of Black-
stone, which, by long use, has become familiar and nat-
ural to the profession; but in the treatment of his
topics the author is by no means slavish.

With rather unusual and commendable candor Prof.
Minor tells us in the preface to the present edition that
"the appearance of a second edition of the first two
volumes of this work, after so brief an interval, might
seem to indicate a degree of favor which the perform-
ance has not attained, nor indeed has had an opportu-
nity to achieve; for though not denied to those who
sought it, no attempt has been made to invite purchasers,
nor has it yet been offered to the general pub-
lic at all." He adds: "A reprint, however, having
been made requisite by circumstances which need not
be detailed, advantage has been taken of the occasion
to revise the text, to make many corrections and some
additions, and especially to put the whole in a more
compact form, thereby lessening the bulk, and in a still
greater ratio, the price." We greatly fear that there
are many writers who, being less explicit, would have
abused the situation by permitting the reader to sup-
pose that the first edition had been suddenly snapped
up by an eager and keenly appreciative public; also
that there are not a few who would have laid greater
stress on the additions than on the corrections.

The work is that of the life of a man eminent for
learning and labor in the walks of jurisprudence. How
difficult it is to write a really good and accurate law
book may be inferred from the fact that in revising a
work which the author has, in the course of profess-
sional teaching, been in the daily habit of reviewing
for many years, he finds many errors that need correc-
tion. Whether these errors were of any magnitude, or
might properly be compared with the rather few and
feeble, though sinful, sallies of wit that filled with re-
morse the spirit of the retrospective and conscientious
Quaker of Charles Lamb- a spirit that aggravated and
multiplied every past departure from rigid sobriety- is
a thing of which we have not had an opportunity to in-
quire. There is something, however, in the wary and
chastised style of the author that shows that he is quite
capable of applying the file to his own productions
with the unsparing resolution that Horace commends,
however grating and harsh the sound produced by
such a process may be. It is quite a relief to find, as a
result of this course, a law book which is absolutely
free from redundancy.

The training in the law department of Universi-
ty of Virginia has always been marked by its thorough-
ness, while other law schools have not unfrequently
graduated students who could not, as a matter of life
and death, tell the difference between a common of
piscary and a free fishery, having only a vague notion
of the running contents of a few later works, fortified
by a stern resolve to read Walker's American Law and
Ram on Facts at an early day. The foundation of Jeffer-
son adheres to the somewhat antiquated rubrics that
demand a laborious acquaintance with the fundament-
al principles which underlie the vast edifice of the law.

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the
present work will be found useful to students only. It
is apprehended that Prof. Minor does not make the
common discrimination of books that are good for stu-
dents and books that are good for lawyers. He evident-
ly regards his students as being of that robust kind from
whom there is no need to preserve the approaches to
animal food, and who could hardly grow in intel-
lectual stature and strength, if they should be restricted
to a diet of milk alone. He rather supposed them to
have undergone a literary training and discipline
which will make them ready to take hold of something
hard and enduring, as the world goes. Hence the
present work is not one of well rounded generalities,
making the student exclaim that he had no idea that
the law was such a light and agreeable study. It might
rather be likened to a skillfully arranged armory in
which the student will find most of the bright, strong
weapons which he will habitually need in his coming
warfare, the use and right knowing of which involves
the work of a lifetime. The fact that the author de-
scends into the minor details of his subject, with a
most pertinacious spirit of inquiry, will, we apprehend,
cause the present treatise to be as often referred to by
the bench and bar as any that has lately seen the light.
The chapters on "Title by Alienation," cover four
hundred and fifteen pages of the second volume. If it
had been published as a separate treatise, it would
probably have commanded an extensive sale. There
is nothing anywhere extant on the subject that is half
so through; and it seems indeed to be everything that
is needed. It is to be remembered that all of these
pages are pages of law, from which every useless word
has been expelled as if by some patent winnowing proc-
ess; pages in which principles claiming to be scien-
tific are attempted to be presented with scientific pre-
cision. In other parts of the work the author is
equally painstaking and conscientiously minute.

This is the day of monographs. Science and learn-
ing are cut into sections and fragments, and distributed
to a hungry multitude according to the appetites and
digestion of different applicants. Tired of allopathic
doses, the present generation is willing to take its
mental fertilizers in homoeopathic pellets, and so to be
thankful to Heaven and Dr. Hahnemann. The old
abridgments are too ponderous for a race of men that
never donned a coat of mail nor swung a forty-pound
battle-axe. There must be a reason for the change of
taste, if taste it be, that has cause men to prefer the
separate and smaller treatises on special questions of
law. Certainly the smaller works are handier. and
yet there is room for books like the present; provided
that they show an ability and learning equal to the in-
creased magnitude of the tasks with which they deal.
U.M.R
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In San Francisco recently, a Chinaman, who was indicted
for murder, was instructed by his counsel to attempt to
prove an alibi, as being the best line of evidence he could
adopt under the circumstances. Accordingly, at the trial, a
couple of Celestials appeared, and swore that at the time of
the murder he was at work in a wash-house; two more
swore that he was at home in bed, and several others were
prepared to prove that he was in several other places, when
the lawyer interfered and stopped further testimony.