290 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
It will probably have appeared to my hearers, at the first blush, that the 
objections I have already urged against the adoption of Mr. Thomson's sys- 
- tem,areobjections rather from a surveyor's point of view than from a lawyer's; 
but a more careful consideration of the matter will, I think, lead them to the 
inference, that, in the main, objections taken from the one must apply with 
equal force to the other. In a former part of this paper I pointed out the 
importance which lawyers, engaged in eonveyaneing, attach to accuracy in 
the description of the property to be dealt with, and I now propose shortly 
to sketch the origin of our system of conveyancing with the view of shewing 
the tendency of improvement in this particular direction, and the special 
necessity for such improvement if the system, established under the Land 
Transfer Acts, is to become a satisfactory reality. 
I have always personally advocated the adoption of cheap and simple 
modes of dealing with landed property, but I have also deprecated inter- 
ference with these questions on the part of untrained men. Changes of 
law and system in matters of such moment ought not lightly to be made, 
and, when made, ought to be attended with all the safeguards against error 
which the widest experience can bring to bear upon them. Now, although 
I am quite alive to the advantages which the community may reap from 
the adoption of the principle involved in the Land Transfer Acts, I 
cannot shut my eyes to the fact—and I do not hesitate in saying that all 
the officers engaged in administering those Acts will concur with me in 
opinion—that, as now in operation in this Colony, they are ill-constructed 
and embarrassing, and are sure to produce an abundant crop of litigation. 
If my watch is out of order, I do not take it to a tinker for repairs; and I 
see little difference between this case and that of a layman attempting to 
make amendments in a highly technical branch of law, with which he has 
no acquaintance whatever, beyond the possible accident of having purchased 
a few acres of land. Our system of dealing with land is one of very long 
growth, but although, in the remarks I am about to make, I shall have to 
go back many centuries in time, I do not propose to make them very weari- 
some. 
Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, who were ignorant of the art of writing, 
conveyed their property from one to another in open folkmoot, by means of 
visible signs and symbols, which awakened attention, and ensured that the 
memory of the transaction should remain with the Witan, who were called 
together by the ** Mot-bel” to witness and record it. Many curious instances 
of alienation by symbol are to be found, collected by Selden, Palgrave, and 
others, but the symbols themselves appear to have varied with the whim 
of the donor, and not to have been reduced to any particular system. In 
like manner, we find that, amongst the Jews, when a purchase was effected, 
