A Treatise on the Law of Corporate Bonds and Mortgages. Being the second edition of "Railroad Securities," revised. By Leon ard A. Jones. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., Boston and New York, 1890. $6.00.
The notes and references by the editor form an im portant and valuable feature of these volumes, and in the present volume the annotations of Mr. Beach are fuller than usual. About eighty cases are re ported, covering a broad field of Probate Law.
Since the publication of the first edition of this work, the growth and change in the law of the sub ject have rendered it necessary that a large portion of the book should be written anew, and a change has been made in the title in order the more accurately to indicate the scope of the work. The treatise is now, in fact, a continuation of Mr. Jones's well-known work on "Mortgages of Real Property," and applies the general principles of the law to all mortgages made by corporations. It has been the purpose of the author not to include in the present treatise subjects elementary or general in the law of mortgages. The public nature of rail road and other like corporations having public duties to perform, in return for the franchises granted them, and the nature and extent of their property, have in troduced into mortgages of their franchises and prop erty new elements of law, which have now developed into a separate branch of jurisprudence. The secur ities considered in this book are of quite recent origin, and for the most part are the outgrowth of the recent extraordinary development of the railroad system of this country. The amount of labor necessary to bring this now edition into a shape conformable to the author's pur pose may be appreciated from the fact that of the seven hundred and more sections into which the present volume is divided, about one third are wholly new; and of the remaining sections the larger part have received important additions or alterations. The new cases cited are about two thirds in number of the cases cited in the original work. It is almost unnecessary to add that Mr. Jones has performed his task, as he always does, most satisfac torily, and this treatise is a really valuable addition to legal text-books.
Foster's Federal Practice. Equity; Com mon Law; Removal of Causes. A Trea tise on Pleading and Practice in Equity in the Courts of the United States, with chapters on Jurisdiction of the Federal Courts, Practice at Common Law, Removal of Causes from State to Federal Courts, and Writs of Error and Appeals, with special references to Patent Causes and the Foreclosure of Railway Mort gages. By Roger Foster, of the New York B.ir. The Boston Book Company, Boston, 1890. Law sheep. $6.00 net.
American Probate Repokts. Vol. VI. With notes and references by Charles Fisk Beach, Jr., of the New York Bar. Baker, Voorhis, & Co., New York, 1890. $5-50 net. The plan of this admirable series of Reports is to give in an annual volume contemporaneous or recent decisions of the highest courts of the different States of the Union upon all matters cognizable in Probate Courts. The labor of lawyers will be much facili tated and lessened by thus having before them the most recent and valuable decisions drawn from the numerous State Reports upon subjects which have to be considered daily in the practice of the law.
There is already a voluminous literature pertaining to the Federal Courts. There are twenty-seven vol umes of United States Statutes, five rival editions of the one hundred and thirty-two volumes of Supreme Court Reports, about two hundred volumes of re ports of the Circuit and District Courts, and some fifteen volumes of Digests to contain and index the statutes and decisions coming from Federal authority. As commentaries on this mass of cases and statutes there are perhaps a dozen recent books, mainly con venient arrangements of the statutes, or digests thrown into the form or semblance of treatises. It is no in justice to these books to say that we have had of late years no thorough and satisfactory treatise upon the practice of the United States courts. That such a trea tise would be useful, even the most experienced practi tioner will confess. On the chancery side especially it is often difficult to find the procedure and forms which will satisfy the court and defy the criticism of opposing counsel. The note of Judge Bradley to the case of Thompson v. Woostcr [114 U. S. 112] calls attention to the uselcssness of the modern chancery treatises, English as well as American, when applied to the practice of the United States courts. To sup ply this deficiency in our law literature, Mr. Foster's volume, published as we go to press, comes very op portunely and satisfactorily. We have not had time to give it the crucial test of actual use, but from a somewhat thorough examination of advanced sheets, we feel warranted in saying that the author — known as yet to the profession at large only by two small monographs — has compiled a very excellent and very useful work. It bears evidence of having been worked out not by study alone, but by experience and prac tice in the courts; and without being "padded " with lengthy quotations from cases, it appears to contain about everything material to the topics treated.
