Two MEN were brought before the magis trate in Belfast the other day charged with fighting on the public street. Both pleaded "Not guilty." After hearing the evidence of the constable, the magistrate discharged one, and was about to impose a fine on the other, when his released comrade shouted out, "Yer worship, we worn't fightin' when the polis tuk us; we were trying to separate each other!" Both got off.— Victoria Cross Mag azine. GOLF (says The Law Times') always seems to have had a traditional connection with the wearers of wig and gown. Literature, in its widest sense, supplies many illustra tions that this has been so. Sir Walter Scott paced many a weary step through the echoing hall of Parliament House waiting fur more lucrative briefs than Peter Peebles v. Plainstanes. There does not seem to be any actual record among the chronicles of his contemporaries that "the Shirra" played tlie game, but that he was familiar with its jargon of technicalities is seen clearly uioiigh by his autobiographic references in Red Gauntlet. He must have seen the game played over the now discarded Leith Links, once the golfing haunt of Scottish royalty and nobility, and in all probability he tried his hand with the driver and the old feather ball over Bruntsfield Links, near the house of his father. Though Robert Louis Steven son was entitled to put a brass plate with the word "advocate" on the door of his father's house in Heriot row, he was never known to hive handled a golf club, though the major ity of his friends were golfers. Yet now and again throughout his books he works in with «.ppropriateness a golfing simile, as, for ex ample, the heading of "A Teed Ball," to one of the chapters of Catriona. IF a prisoner is tired of saying "not guilty, m'lud," he may vary the monotony of that proceeding by pointing to the prosecutor and remarking: "He is a liar." Five eminent judges, after full considera tion of this important question, yesterday
reached the conclusion that the two are practically exchangeable terms, or, at all events, that the one phrase is' merely a hyper bolical form of the other. "The statement that the prosecutor was a liar," said Mr. Justice Darling, "appears to me to be merely a repetition of Rouse's plea of not guilty—with emphasis. "It was only because he was in court," added the judge, solemnly, "that Rouse did not specify the particular kind of liar the nrosecutor was. "He did nothing more than he had a right to. He put his statement in the emphatic way of a man of his class. "In the heat of cross-examination, he said of one man what the psalmist in his haste said of all men."—London Express. CORRESPONDENCE. To the Editor of THE GREEN BAG : SIR :—As the case is;it once the foundation and the source of the law in the English speaking world, it is necessarily the basis of instruction whether it be discussed in de tail, in class, or whether it be digested by text-writer, or by the lecturer, who in a less formal way digests the case and gives the result to the student. Private study in a law office differs in degree not in kind; for the case whether printed or not, whether in the form of text, or in the brief and abstract form of a digest properly so-called, is still the ultimate source of our knowledge of the law. A busy lawyer cannot well spare the time for discussion or analysis of a case and test by examination the student's grasp of the subject, as was formerly the practice. The student in the office is, therefore, thrown almost wholly on the printed page and him self. If, then, the case is in itself of the utmost importance, its setting might well be a mat ter of interest as well as moment. The parties to the action; the lawyers in the case; the judge or judges delivering the judgment of the court—a consideration of these not only lends an interest to the transaction, but very often throws a clear and strong
