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following committee has been appointed by the Council of the Harvard Law School Association to award the prize offered for the best essay: Louis D. Brandeis, LL.B., ’77; Abbott Lawrence Lowell, LL.B., ’80; Winthrop H. Wade, LL.B., ’84.

popular notion that the only thing necessary for the breaking of a will is a contest, does not seem well founded in the light of the experience of the Surrogate Court of New York City. Of seven thousand wills probated in that court in the last six years, less than four hundred were contested, and of these but fifty were broken.

A point came up recently in Massachusetts in the celebrated case of Stogdale v. Baker, in which the defendant was sued for malpractice. On the fourth trial, before entering on the examination of witnesses, the counsel for the defence moved that the plaintiff should file a bond, with proper securities, for the payment of all the costs of the trial suit, in all the four trials, if, in this trial, the jury rendered a verdict for the defendant. The Court granted the motion. The verdict was subsequently given for the defendant.

the report of the Treasurer of the Association, the names of the contributors to the fund for increasing the instruction in Constitutional Law are given as follows: James C. Carter, Esq., of New York, $500; William G. Russell, Esq., of Boston, $100; George O. Shattuck, Esq., of Boston, $100; John Lowell, Esq., of Boston, $100; George Putnam, Esq., of Boston, $50; William Minot, Jr., Esq., of Boston, $25; Robert M. Morse, Jr., Esq., of Boston, $25; James Storrow, Esq., of Boston, $50; A. Lawrence Lowell, Esq., of Boston, $25; Arthur L. Huntington, Esq., of Salem, Mass., $25.

case of Foster v. Wheeler, 36 Ch. D. 695, raises the question of the effect of a contract to enter into a contract. Mr. Justice Kekewich says he has examined a number of the definitions of contract in the books, among them an American, Mr. Parsons, and settles on the one given by Mr. Pollock as the most satisfactory. His definition is “an act in the law whereby two or more persons declare their consent as to any