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70 70 HARVARD LAW REVIEW, where parties are putting in " evidence " ; it applies equally where the " evidence " is all in. It covers the topic of argument, of legal reasoning ; and equally of reasoning about law and about .fact ; while the law of evidence relates merely to matter of fact offered to a judicial tribunal as the basis of inference to another matter of fact. To undertake to crowd within the limits proper to the law of evidence the considerations necessary for the de- termination of matters of a far wider scope, like those questions of logic and general experience and substantive law involved in the subjects of Presumption and Judicial Notice, 1 and that com- pound of considerations of the same character, coupled with others relating to the history and technicalities of pleading and mere forensic procedure, which lie at the bottom of what is called by this name of the "Burden of Proof," — to attempt this is to burst the sides of the smaller subject and to bring obscurity over the whole of it. And, moreover, it is to condemn this topic, so important in the daily conduct of legal affairs, and so much needing a clear exposition, to a continuance of that neglect, and that slight and merely incidental treatment which it has so long suffered. James B. Thayer, Cambridge, May, 1890. ELEVATED ROAD LITIGATION. rpHE case of Story v. N. Y. Elevated R. R. Co., 90 N. Y. 122, -^ presented to the court of last resort in the State of New York a problem in the decision of which was involved a larger amount " of property rights than ever came before an Ameri- can tribunal, unless, perhaps, in the telephone cases. And the case also teemed with as many interesting, important, and varied legal questions as any one case could present. It was sui generis and novel in the matters in controversy. It was twice argued by the flower of the New York bar. It considered and laid down what are the rights in the highways that abutters on public streets possess. It determined what is and what is not a legitimate and ^ 3 Harv. Law Rev. 141 ^ ib. 285.