Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 02.pdf/550

 505

Editorial Department. aged. Why should a respectable citizen be brought into court to be made a butt for the stale wit and libellous innuendoes of so-called professional gentlemen? Why do judges allow the ordinary courtesies of life to be violated every day in the tribunals, where, if anywhere, the rules of decency and decorum should be rigidly enforced? Why should a pert attorney be permitted to imply by his mode of exami nation that a gentleman and a man of honor, whom he knows to be such, has appeared on the witness-stand for the express purpose of perjur ing himself, and is, upon the whole, a suspicious character? Is it not enough that an honest man should be taken from his business without compen sation to testify in a case in which he has no personal interest, but he must also have his reputation assailed and his feelings wrung by a lawyer who is paid for the job? — New York Ledger. A rather curious affair will, it is expected, shortly be brought under the notice of the Paris law courts. A French gentleman, the owner of an estate in the department of Seine-et-Oise, has, it appears, in his grounds a large number of hawthorns of a very rare species, and he is justly proud of them. A short time ago a letter was brought to him, the writer of which was no less a personage than Monsieur le Maire of the local ity, who, to his surprise, informed him that the said hawthorn-trees were the bane of the Com mune. According to the Mayor, so deleterious were the attributes of the peculiar variety of hawthorn that adorned the gentleman's grounds, that the whole country-side was, and had been for a long time past, suffering from their influ ence. In a word, the two years during which they had flowered had witnessed all kinds of calamities in the Commune, where neither the crops nor the health of the inhabitants had prospered. Therefore the worthy Mayor, being for some reason fully persuaded that the haw thorns were to blame, took the advice of the local Council, the result being an ultimatum that the gentleman must forthwith destroy these dis astrous trees; or if he refused so to do, the Garde Champetre would be instructed how to proceed. It need hardly be said that the owner of the hawthorns means neither to destroy them,

nor to allow them to be destroyed by order of the Mayor, who is determined, if these terrible trees are not cut down, to bring the matter be fore the tribunals. — London Standard.

REVIEWS. The leading article in the Law Quarterly Review for October is on " The Law of Criminal Conspiracy in England and Ireland," by Kenelm E. Digby. The other contents are : " The Bourgoise Case, in London and Paris,", by Malcolm Mcllwraith; " The Compulsion of Subjects to leave the Realm," by Wm. F. Craies; " Remote ness and Perpetuity," by J. Savill Vaizey and G. H. Blakesley; "Tinkering Company Law," by Edward Manson; " Difficulties of Abstract Juris prudence," by W. W. Buckland; " Gifts of Chat tels without Delivery," by Sir Frederick Pollock.

The October number, which completes the twentieth year of the Century, opens with a fron tispiece portrait of Joseph Jefferson. The last instalment of the autobiography accompanies the familiar face, — an instalment which the author considers the most important of all; perhaps be cause it contains, at considerable detail, his own final reflections upon the art of which he is an acknowledged master. Professor Darwin, of Cam bridge, England, contributes a paper of high and original value on " Meteorites and the History of Stellar Systems." " A Hard Road to Travel out of Dixie," is the accurate title of a paper in the Century's new war-prison series. The present contribution is by the well-known artist and illus trator, Lieut. W. H. Shelton, of New York. Mr. Shelton naturally furnishes his own illustrations for his own story of hardship and adventure. "Prehistoric Cave-Dwellings " is a profusely and strikingly illustrated paper by F. T. Bickford, on the prehistoric and ruined pueblo structures in Chaco Cafion, New Mexico; the Cafion de Chelly, Arizona, — the ancient home of the most flourishing community of cave-dwellers, — and other extraordinary cave-villages not now in habited. The first article in the number is a