12 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. I. 



Mr. Stark enquired respecting the sparrows whether they drove away 

 any insectivorous birds. 



Mr. Williams did not think that they were so bad as the American 

 Report tried to make them out. He did not think they had extermin- 

 ated any birds. 



Mr. Harvey called attention to the persistency with which some birds 

 frequented the same locality. He had noticed a wren that came to the 

 same place for five years in succession. The same bluebirds came three 

 years, and the same cat-birds three or four years successively. He had a 

 fly-catcher about his place for four or five years. 



EIGHTH MEETING. 



Eighth Meeting, 21st December, 1889, the President in the chair. 



Donations and exchanges since last meeting, 37. 



Mr. T. B. Browning read a paper on " The Codification of the Law." 



The paper opened with an account of codification in India, and the 

 progress of the movement generally. He regarded the term "code" and 

 the qualities usually ascribed to it as relative rather than absolute. That 

 code is best which is most complete, most precise, most systematic. The 

 laws which pass under Justinian's name would not be called a code 

 in any modern meaning of the word. There are states of law 

 as growing custom, which scarcely admitted of codification, but the 

 general mass of our procedure and substantive law was in a fit condition 

 for and urgently demanded codification, while the most effective means 

 of codifying was by taking the law in sections, as was done in India. 

 Case, statute, and text-book law was reviewed, and the approximate 

 result of codification upon each pointed out. Case law showed itself in 

 three stages, historically speaking : — As voluntary reporting by judges 

 and counsel in the olden time; speculative, where publishers engaged in 

 it for profit ; authoritative, under direction of legal authorities. Mr. 

 Browning was of opinion that all cases in the Superior Courts should be 

 officially reported, and not some only as now, and gave as his reason 

 that each judgment not only determines the law for a particular group of 

 facts, but with us constitutes a rule to be followed in subsequent similar 

 groups ; is as much a part of the law as a statutory provision, and the 

 means of ascertaining that law should be given. The only remedy for the 



