368 HARVARD LAW REVIEW, dryness, this little work of Professor Gray's would be a refreshing revela- tion. The peculiar nature of the book^ combining, as it does, an argument for justice with a collection of the many authorities into one. has given an opportunity for a piece of animated writing, and a demonstration that a law book may be at once both profound and readable. h. w. A Treatise on Land Titles in the United States. By Lewis N. Dembitz of the Louisville Bar. St. Paul, Minn. : West Publishing Co. 1895. 2 vols. pp. xvi, viii, 1655. The present work is the result of three years' constant industry on the part of the author; and the result justifies the labor. It would, however, be more accurately styled a "Digest" than a "Treatise." So far as can be judged by a rapid examination, the author has striven to state clearly and with precision the principles for which the multitude of cases on the subject of Land Titles stand, but has with equal care kept his own individuality in the background. Rarely does he defend or attack a particular doctrine or give us a clue to his own preference. As a digest it is hard to take excep- tion to the two volumes the author has given us ; and he may well be con- tent to let it stand as he describes it in his Prefkce, " his last work." We cannot but admire the painstaking thoroughness which the author displays, and which has enabled him to collect the decisions and statutes of over forty States on so comprehensive a subject, and present them in well classified arrangement. It is essential to the helpfulness of the work that its scope be fully understood. In the first place, it is a digest of the American law only of Land Titles, and but few English cases are included. It therefore contains next to nothing of mediaeval and obsolete law of real property, but deals with the law in its modern shape with little attempt to trace its development. Topics too not directly bound up with the subject of tide to land are excluded. Under this head fall the law of easements and of fixtures, and the discussion of remedies by which possession of land is regained. Trusts of land is another topic dealt with only in a sum- mary manner ; and the reader is referred to other authorities for a fuller discussion. On the other hand, "Title out of the Sovereign," "The Registry Laws," "Judgments affecting Land," and "Title by Judicial Process," receive in as many different chapters a fuller treatment than is accorded them elsewhere. " Title by Prescription " is excellently treated at length. Adverse criticism must of course be made on some points. For in- stance, there is no mention of the various rules for determining the division among riparian owners of land formed by accretion ; under the subject of "Deeds," the old undiscriminadng distinction is made between " latent " and " patent " ambiguities, and extrinsic evidence is said to be admissible to interpret the deed in the former case, but not in the latter; in the chapter on "Title by Prescription," under the head of "Tacking," the case of Fan7iing v. Wilcox^ 3 Day, 258, is cited in support of the rule that " transfer of land with delivery of possession is enough to justify tacking," although it is really one of the very infrequent authorities for the doctrine that successive disseisors may tack. Such defects are however minor. The author in an appended note (p. 1458) expresses the hope that, by the demonstration of the diversity and uncertainty of American law on
