body of justice doctrine the influence of kinship in legal evolution. "In point of historical development intestate inheritance precedes testamentary succession. The conception of a will as a means of disinheriting children and devolving an estate in accordance with the excessive partiality, fleeting caprice, or malignant temper of the testator, is a conception of our modern times, and was not familiar to the jurisprudence of primitive antiquity. In fact, ancient law regarded a will as a means of perpetuating the family in a succeeding generation by nominating a new chief on whom the headship was to be devolved. Little power of free testamentary alienation was recognized. The patriarch was more like a trustee or steward of common possessions belonging to the family than an original proprietor. He could not do as he saw fit with what seemed to be his. Often a son, on coming of age, could compel his father to make a partition of the family holdings, as suggested by Jesus's parable of the prodigal son.
The ninth of the series of annual abstracts of the Linnæan Society of New York contains a paper on the Fishes of the Fresh and Brackish Waters in the Vicinity of New York City, by Eugene Smith. Mr. Smith has found fifty native, eleven introduced, and twelve probably occurring native species, belonging to fifty-four genera and twenty-four families, showing that while the number of species is not large, the families are well represented. None of the species are limited to a small area of near-by country. "The fresh-water species of New England and of the Maritime Provinces as far as the Gulf of St. Lawrence are nearly all found with us, the exceptions being mostly the absence here of the more northern salmonids. Our vicinity represents a sort of border land between the very restricted fish fauna of the New England 'Zoölogical Island,' as Agassiz called it, and the far richer fauna encountered in the Delaware basin immediately to the west of us," with a few fishes that properly belong to the eastern Carolina basin.
A singular lithological formation is described by Prof. Persifor Frazer as exhibited by the ore in the Coletta mines of the Northern Black Hills of South Dakota. Uneven lenticular masses of ore have been deposited on the upper surface of the quartzite, suggesting a resemblance to sausages strung together by slender strings. The masses lie approximately in the same plane at intervals of thirty or forty feet, parallel with each other, and are intersected by other similar masses at right angles, the richness and quantity of the ore being increased at the junction. These corrugations, as they are called, are broad and shallow masses from five to twelve feet wide and from eight inches to three feet thick. Where they are united end to end, or at the parts analogous to the connecting string of the sausages, the rock becomes sandy and free gold is found. The strange formation is supposed to be caused by the existence of furrows or troughs in the surface of the quartzite in which the contents of the metalliferous solutions were deposited, but what caused the depressions is not clear.
A two-weeks' Summer School of Sociology, Economics, and Politics will be held at Syracuse University, Syracuse, N. Y., June 27th to July 9th, when seven hours of classroom work each day—five lectures and a conference of two hours—for eleven days, will be given; with a sermon by an eminent minister on the Sunday, both dealing with the religious bearings of present-day social movements. The lecture courses will be given by John R. Commons, professor of sociology, on Social Philosophy; Charities, Inebriety, Crime, and Child Serving, and City Government; and by Dr. J. H. Hamilton, professor of political economy, on Industrial Problems and Money and Banking. A Cooperative Boarding Club will be organized, by the aid of which and other means of reducing expenses the whole cost of sojourn at the school, including tuition charges will not be more than $14. Inquiries may be addressed to J. H. Hamilton, 306 Waverly Place, Syracuse, N. Y.
At the summer quarter of the West Virginia University, Morgantown, beginning July 1st and continuing twelve weeks, the teaching of sociology and allied subjects will be a prominent feature. The quarter will be divided into two terms of six weeks each, of which students may enter either or for any part of the quarter. Dr. Lester F. Ward will give two courses of class lectures on Pure and on Applied Sociology, and four public lectures. Prof. J. H. Hamilton, of Syracuse University, will deliver two courses on Money and Banking, and on Industrial Problems (July 11th to August 13th). Prof. J. H. Raymond will deliver two full courses through the quarter on the Principles of Economics
