66 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. tional upon performance, and of impossible contracts ; but the body of the book is rather devoted to the limitations of the contractual relation either from its content or the action of the parties, than to its forma- tion or fulfilment. Suits of this nature are more common certainly than those with regard to mutual assent or consideration, and probably than those which concern rights of action dependent upon performance ; so that those who demand a more evident and rapid return from their time will find this book a welcome addition to the course in this school. The chief differences between this volume and its predecessors are that here the great preponderance of English authority has not been preserved, and that the cases are, as a rule, much more recent. With this addition of cases, a book of which the last edition is now fifteen years old becomes, without revision, quite as valuable as it ever was ; while a text-book depends for its value upon constant revision of the conclusions contained in it, as well as upon the addition of cases. This is a fortunate accident of a method which offers to the student a chance to do his own thinking, in preference to working out his own conclusions for him. B. L. H. Car Trusts in the United States: The Law of Contracts of Conditional Sale of Rolling Stock. By Gherardi Davis and G. Morgan Browne, Jr. New York, 1894. 8vo. pphlet, pp. 49. One of the most interesting things in the common law is the way in which men under the exigencies of new forms of business will sometimes seize hold upon a little used branch of the law, adapt it to their purposes, and develop it almost into a subject by itself. This very good treatment of the law of " Car Trusts " shows how the desire of railway companies to get rolling stock which they cannot pay for, and the desire of other people to secure payment in the future by a right against the rolling stock itself, have caused a use of the law of conditional sale of which the courts of a few decades ago would never have dreamed. The authors recommend the careful investigation and consideration of the terms of each contract, and the refinements of words upon which some courts have gone far in basing distinctions show that the recommenda- tion is a good one. The Supreme Court of the United States, for instance, has decided a case in favor of an unregistered conditional sale where registry of mortgages was required by law, upon the express distinction that the words of the parties provided that "title, ownership, and pos- session " were not to pass, not caring that the first thing the parties did was to pass possession (118 U. S. 663; and cf. 136 U. S. 268). One wonders how they would deal with an instrument which provided that compliance with the statutory requirements of registration should be a condition precedent of any right in the vendee ; and one does not won- der that an ingenious bridge company thought it could keep its lien on a bridge sold, to be affixed to the realty, as against a prior known mort- gage covering the whole roadbed. Apart from these vagaries of refine- ment, the ordinary ironclad car trust, well-considered forms for which are given in the appendix, seems to the authors to furnish a sufficient protection to the holders of car-trust certificates. R. w. H.
