teeth to see whether or not they were properly made. The magistrate read the section of the Act of Parliament, and said the application came under the words ' property or thing.' ' Could a woman's mouth be called a property or a thing?' He was not prepared to say that it could be, therefore he could make no order on the application." This is commended to those wiseacres who in two or three states have recently enacted statutes com pelling plaintiffs in actions for corporeal injuries to submit their bodies for surgical inspection at the defendant's demand.
The Police Power. —The paternalism of govern ment has never been more amusingly illustrated than in a statute which came up for construction in Ex parte Hodges, 87 Cal. 162. The Act in question required all owners and occupants of land in a certain county, within ninety days "to exterminate and destroy the ground squirrels on their respective lands," and make any violation of it a misdemeanor. The Court said : — "We regret exceedingly that we cannot see our way clear to uphold and enforce such an important and original piece of legislation. Indeed, it would give us great pleas ure to see the power here assumed applied to snakes, ta rantulas, ants, flies, fleas, and other reptiles, insects and pests which tend to make man's life a burden, and to have it exercised and enforced in every county in the state. But we are unable to see by what right or authority of law a board of supervisors can impose upon a landowner the burden and expense of exterminating animals ferae naturae on his own land or elsewhere." Such legislation might be judiciously extended to innkeepers and housekeepers, commanding the for mer to exterminate the vermin in their beds, and the latter to extirpate the cockroaches in their kitchens.
Negligence — Reform School. — In Williamson v. Louisville Industrial School of Reform, Kentucky Court of Appeals, 23 L. R. A. 200, it was held that a reform school under the control and oversight of the legislature, which is an agency of the state and maintained by taxation and state aid, is not liable to an action for damages for negligent or malicious injuries to an inmate by its servants or employes. The Court said : — "Its object and business was to take charge of such youths as might be committed to it, and care for their moral and physical training and education. It was a charity, and its purpose was reformation by training its in mates to habits of industry, and by instilling into their minds the principles of right living, to the end that they might become useful citizens of the state, rather than fill
its prisons and poorhouses. The incorporators and their successors are under the control and oversight of the legis lature, and are mere instrumentalities of the commonwealth. The state interposed in behalf of neglected and abandoned children within its confines in its capacity of parens patriae, and assumed the guardianship of such children as were committed to the institution. It was an agency of the state, and maintained by taxation and state aid. The functions of the institution are governmental. As said in Farnham v. Pierce, 141 Mass. 203, 55 Am. Rep. 452: ' It is a provision by the commonwealth, as parens patriae, for the custody and care of neglected children, and is intended only to supply to them the parental custody which they have lost.' In Perry v. House of Refuge, 63 Md. 20, 52 Am. Rep. 495, it was held that an action does not lie against a state house of refuge for an assault on an inmate by an officer thereof. It is there said : ' Youths, in whom the seeds of vice have already germinated, are placed there under proper restraint, so that the growth of crime may be arrested or eradicated in its incipiency. Funds are contributed by individuals impelled by philanthropic mo tives, and donations are obtained from municipal and state treasuries. These are the funds of the institution, contrib uted by the managers, not for their own profit or benefit, but solely for the charitable purposes designated by its organic law. . . Several of the most eminent judges in England expressed themselves with much emphasis in oppo sition to an allowance of damages out of a fund so held by fiduciary agents '; and the principle determined in a num ber of English cases, that ' damages are to be paid out of the pocket of the wrongdoer, and not from the trust fund,' was approved. It is contended that these cases fol lowed the older decisions in England, and that the latter have been since overruled. Be this as it may, the prin ciple announced seems entirely just and reasonable. If the funds of these institutions are to be diverted from their intended beneficent purposes by law suits and judgments for damages for negligent or malicious servants, their use fulness — indeed, their existence — will soon be a thing of the past."
Cypher Telegram. — The economical persons who save money by sending cypher cablegrams must not expect anything more than nominal damages in case of failure in transmission. In Western Union Tel. Co. v. Wilson, 32 Florida, 527. 37 Am. St. Rep. 125, the despatch ran: " Dobell, Liverpool: Gladfulness — shipment — rosa — bonheur — luciform — banewort — margin," and really related to an authority to sell lumber, but the Court said it " con tained nothing that would indicate to the defendant's operator whether it contained a criticism upon the 'Horse Fair' painting by the great artist Rosa Bonheur named in the message, or whether it related to a matter of dollars and cents." This case contains a valuable list of authorities pro and con. See Primrose v. W. U. Tel. Co., 14 Sup. Ct. Reps. 1098.
