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The Green Bag

said to Boswell, "it is when you come close to a man in conversation that you discover what his real abilities are. To make a speech in a public assembly is a knack. Now, I honor Thurlow, sir; Thurlow is a fine fellow. He fairly puts his mind to yours." On another occasion he said: "Thurlow is a man of such vigor of mind that I never knew I was to meet him but—I was going to tell a false hood—I was going to say I was afraid of him, and that would not be true, for I was never afraid of any man yet; but I never knew I was to meet Thurlow but I knew I had something to encounter." He must "always think," he added, before he replied to Thurlow. Horne Tooke, Sir Philip Francis, and other noted talkers of the day all quailed before

Thurlow. Pity that his conversation was so garnished with oaths! He became in his retirement a great reader of novels, and, on one occasion so interested was he in the plot that he dispatched his groom from Dulwich to London, after ten o'clock at night, for the concluding volume that he might know the fate of the heroine before going to sleep. This was like Lord Selborne, who, in his retirement at Petersfield, burnt his candles to the socket reading nov els. Mr. Justice Maule did worse. He set his chambers in the Temple on fire from a similar love of fiction, which he considered excellent to "air the mind." A life of law, it must be confessed, tends to starve the imagination, and Nature—as these eminent judges show— is always avenged.

Review of Periodicals Jlrlicles on Topics of Legal Science and Related Subjects Adoption. See Comparative Jurisprudence. Aliens (Status). "Aliens under the Fed eral Laws of the United States. Ill, Federal Legislation: Public Lands, Real Estate in the Territories." By Samuel MacClintock. 4 Illi nois Law Review 27 (May). The third of a series of four papers (see 21 Green Bag 166, 228). "We thus see by way of summary, that Congress has full power to dispose of the pubuc domain. It nas allowed aliens to pur chase the public lands on the same terms as citizens; it has granted them pre-emption and homestead rights upon declaration of intention to become citizens, though in the latter case, full title might not be acquired until complete citizenship had been attained. "The result of this liberal policy has been the attraction of great numbers of immi grants from Europe who have settled upon the public lands and in time have generally become American citizens." Animals. "The Responsibility at Common Law for the Keeping of Animals." By Thomas Beven. 22 Harvard Law Review 465 (May). An erudite and witty review of the decision of the English Court of Appeal in Baker v. Snell (1908), 2 K. B. 325, 825. "The being ferce nature is not (as the Court of Appeal is unanimous in supposing)

the ground of the liability for the acts of an escaped tiger or of a biting dog. If it were so the liability would extend to the devasta tions of rabbits, the thefts of foxes, the evil wrought by squirrels, jackdaws and the rest, which it plainly does not. For the rule of liability for the mischief done by animals ferce nature? is diverse; and the ground of the diversity is whether the mischievous agency is property or not. This does not seem to have occurred to any member of the Court of Appeal. They accept a loose statement and clothe it with a pretense of uniformity where in truth there is none." Bailments. "Liability of Deposit Com panies." By E. Fabre Surveyer. 29 Canadian Law Times 462. Blockade. "Some Points in the Law of Blockade." By Sir William Rann Kennedy, Lord Justice of the Court of Appeal. Journal of Comparative Legislation, no. xx, p. 239 (Apr.) . This paper was read at the Conference of the International Law Association at Budapesth, 1908. To quote:— "It appears to me that in this matter it is not a question of choice between the very wide Anglo-American area of capture and the very narrow area given by the French view of international rights,. . . but it occurs to me that a solution of the difficulty of agree ment between the advocates of the two systems might be found in the compromise which would result from the adoption by international compact of a rule which should