26 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. amounts to a profession that such degree, extent, and features of inquiry as are practicable shall not be arbitrarily renounced in favor of the element of chance. But in fact, the system of elaborate examination, as it is prac- tised, has no just claim to completeness or symmetry. Not only is it incomplete, but it is arbitrarily incomplete. It makes arbitrary selection of the features of title with which it will and with which it will not deal ; and while it appears to condemn the deliberate taking of chances, it nevertheless does admit that element into title, as distinctly, — although, of course, not» as largely, — as does the system of Httle or no examination. In a former article in this Review ^ the present writer pointed out a number of essentials of title, nowhere to be discovered of record, and almost invariably taken on trust. Among these were : the gen- uineness of signatures of grantors and of certifying magistrates in recorded deeds ; jurisdiction and authority of such magistrates ; status and identity of persons professing to be heirs, and to be all the heirs; sanity; full age; the fact and the validity of marriage; the fact and the validity of divorce, in its direct operation (in respect, for example, of inchoate dower), and its indirect operation (as the basis of subsequent marriage) ; prescription ; adverse pos- session ; identity of physical boundary marks ; the fact and the validity of votes of domestic and of foreign corporations ; death ; servitudes created by acceptance of a deed of other land ; loss of an easement by executed parol license ; ^ loss of title by election (as, by accepting, under a will, a benefit inconsistent with the retaining of the recipient's own land). Other examples may be suggested. (i) In Massachusetts, a town (and probably a religious parish) may convey land by vote, without a deed. In such a case the transfer will not appear upon the ordinary land records. (2) A deed of land may be so framed as to leave the question of boundaries practically a mere question of oral agreement : as, where a deed bounds simply by the grantor's " other land," and the boundary line is fixed merely by the setting of stakes.^ (3) Metes, given in a deed in such form as, upon mere con- struction, to be controlling, may have been controlled by acts of the parties at the delivery of the deed.^ 1 " Record Title to Land," Harvard Law Review, vi, 302. 8 Boston & Maine R. R. v. Doherty, 154 Mass. 314, and cas. cit. • Hooten v. Comerford, 152 Mass. 591. * Dodd v. Wiit, 139 Mass. 63.
