EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT

CURRENT

LEGAL

49 1

LITERATURE

This department is designed to call attention to the articles in all the leading legalperiodicals of the preceding month and to new law books sent usfor review. Conducted by William C. Gray, of Fall River, Mass. The suspension of publication during the summer by the journals published by many of our leading schools of law and the absence of most of the English quarterlies makes the material for this department exceptionally slender this month. The thoughtful article on Voluntary Associations in the American Law Register stands almost alone in importance. BIBLIOGRAPHY. "The Public Records and the Constitution," by Luke Owen Pike, London, Eng. 1907. BIOGRAPHY. "A Great English Scho lar." An appreciation of the late F. W. Maitland, by H. A. L. Fisher, July, Putnatns, (V. ii, p. 420). CONTRACTS. " Discharge of Contracts by Alteration — A Discussion of Material and Immaterial Alterations," by Geo. A. Lee, Central Law Journal, (V. LXV., p. 18). CONVEYANCING. "The Torrens System: Is it Suitable to American Industry? " by Eugene C. Massie n the June American Law yer (V. xv, p. 251). An analysis of the old and the Australian system of title registration and an unqualified approval of the latter. CORPORATIONS (New York). " Suits by Foreign Corporations," by Raymond D. Thurber in the May Bench and Bar (V.;x, p. 54). A resume1 of the cases in New York. CORPORATIONS. A treatise on the Law of Corporate Bonds and Mortgages, being the third edition of " Railroad Securities,' by Leonard A. Jones, the Bobbs-Merrill Co. Indianapolis, 1907. The importance of litigation which involves corporate securities makes a new edition of this standard work of great interest, for al though the general principles seem now well settled, the constant variation in the form of particular securities invented to conform to the needs of involved methods of financing modern business enterprises requires attention to every new decision on the application of these principles. These seem to have been fully and carefully discriminated in this new

edition, though it may be regretted that some of the modern English cases on debentures were not included. While the English securi ties are usually quite different in form from our own there is a tendency on the part of our corporation solicitors to imitate the English forms, so that with proper distinctions the English cases are likely to be of authority. The plan of the book is the same as that of the last edition, and therefore needs no further comment. The most important chapter relate to the construction of corporate mort gages and bonds, especially with reference to after acquired property, remedies and juris diction of courts, and foreclosure and bank ruptcy proceedings. CORPORATIONS. Second Edition of Clark's Handbook of the Law of Private Cor porations, by Francis B. Tiffany. West Pub lishing Company, 1907. This second edition of the work appears ten years after the publication of the first edition. It is arranged, like other vo'umes in the Horn book Series, with a brief summary of the law as a caption for each section. The notes are fu!l with occasionally an important case abstracted at length, and references are gener ally to several different collections. The work is written directly from the cases themselves and is a succ'nct, laborious and painstaking statement of what they decide, without theo rizing on questions which might arise but have not. Thus the author accurately states that the meetings and proceedings of a corporation are not rendered illegal by the fact that one of the shareholders is under a legal disability, but indulges in no ingenious discursiveness as to what would be the legal rights and obliga tions of a corporation if all or a majority of the