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240 satisfactory treatment. It is but just to the author, however, to say that he purposely gives but little consideration to some of these questions, be- cause they are so fully treated in the standard authorities. More careful attention is paid to subjects which have come into prominence within recent years, as a result of our rapid and immense advance in the arts and sciences. The application of newly discovered scientific principles to every-day affairs, and the extensive use of machinery for transportation and manufactures, have not been without influence on the law of evidence, and the author endeavors to show what it has been. The comparatively recent statutory changes, such as those which affect the competency of witnesses and their privileges, have also received the full consideration their importance to-day

A Compendium of both the Common and Statutory Law governing Druggists- and Chemists in New Eng- land. By George Howard Fall, LL.B., Ph.D. Lectures on Roman Law in the Boston University Law School. Boston: Irving P. Fox. [I894?] 8vo. pp. 153, vii.

From one point of view it is desirable that the statutory and common law regulation of members of any trade or profession should be made intelligible and brought home to them; but no layman's manual of the law will ever enable those who read it "to glean from it a clear idea of the . law," as the author hopes in his Preface that this may do; and it would probably be impossible to prevent a layman from occasionally relying to his damage on such a book. This seems nowhere to contain any hint to apothecaries that there is a point beyond which "the man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client." If a layman's use of it can be limited to the more certain branches, it will serve an excellent purpose; but a druggist who assumed as a druggist fairly might assume from the statement on page To that his responsibility for the purity of his drugs was limited to the patronizing of a responsible whole-sale dealer might get into trouble.

By Isaac Franklin Russell, D. C. L., LL.D., Professor in the University of the City of New York. New York: L. K. Strouse & Co. 1894. pp. xiv, 280.

This is an exceptionally good little first book of law, meant apparently, and well suited, for use before the serious study of law is begun. It has, in the form of lectures, as the Preface tells us, been so used with success. The author has succeeded especially well in the definition of the general nature of law, and in the consistent application of his definition. Having neatly pointed out that law is not command, but custom, he makes one feel it when he treats of the limitations of an artificial conception like " consideration " for contracts, as well as when he describes the growth and commercial application of the law of Insurance. The book may safely be recommended to those who want to begin at law and see wh