Book Reviews

The lawyer who, for the last two decades has kept abreast of the literature of the law, is appreciative of the fact that no branch of the old law has received such scientific and scholarly treatment, as has the law of evidence, and few of the more modern fields have been as thoroughly and intelligently cultivated. Led by Professor Thayer in that incomparable series of essays gathered under one title in his “Preliminary Treatise on Evidence at the Common Law,” followed by Professor Wigmore with his edition of Greenleaf’s first volume, and later by his great work “Evidence in Trials at Common Law,” and this work of Professor Wigmore followed in turn by the exhaustive treatise of Mr. Chamberlayne who had previously given us the best American editions of both Taylor and Best, we are driven to acknowledge the field well tilled, even had no others been working in it. It is to be recognized however, that others have during this period done work of real practical value though, it may be, not possessing the same degree of scientific merit