March 1897.] 



PARLIAMENTARY PUBLICATIONS, 



423 



obtained is that they were used "locally," and there were 

 140,251 (including 55,950 in Munster (respecting which the 

 only return is that they were " exported." 



Land Registry. — General and detailed Reports of the Assistant 

 Registrar of the Land Registry on the Systems of Registra- 

 tion of Title now in operation in Germany and Austria- 

 Hungary ; with Appendices. [C. — 8139.] Price Is. Id. 



This publication contains a general report of the method and 

 result of an inquiry into the working of the system of land 

 transfer by registration of title in Germany and Austria- 

 Hungary, which are the only large European States in which 

 the system is at present in force. 



The inquiry extended not only into the legal but also into the 

 financial and administrative branches of the subject, the fees and 

 expenses, the staff, buildings, precautions against fire and other 

 accidents, the connection with the Cadastral surveys, the 

 relations of the central and local branches, protection against 

 fraud and error, compensations for errors, the facilities afforded 

 for landowners and business men in transactions relating to 

 land, and generally into all points on which useful information 

 appeared to be obtainable. 



Full particulars with regard to these subjects are to be found 

 in an accompanying detailed report which gives a general survey 

 of the actual daily working of the system of registration of 

 title under a considerable variety of conditions : in its application 

 to estates of various sizes, values, characters, and situations, 

 and subject to numerous diverse legal, commercial, and political 

 incidents. 



In some of the districts observed, titles had been registered 

 from time immemorial ; in others they had been partially regis- 

 tered for a long period; while in others the system is totally 

 new and unknown, and has been preceded by no registration 

 at all. The particular examples collected in the detailed report 

 include (for instance) such great estates as the ancestral domains 

 of the Bohemian nobility (among whom are to be found some of 

 the largest landowners in Europe), subject to the strictest entails, 

 carrying political privileges of the highest importance, and 

 specially registered in immense separate volumes in the provin- 

 cial capital ; they also include (by way of contrast) the tiny 

 subdivisions of the peasant proprietors of the Rhine Provinces, 

 where the principles and practice of the Code Napoleon are still 

 deeply rooted in the customs and feelings of the people. They 

 include, on the one hand, specimens taken from the rapidly 

 developing building properties in the suburbs of Berlin, with 

 their villa residences and restrictive covenants, and, on the other, 

 remote Silesian manors with their tenant farmers, antique 

 rights of common, and commuted rents and services, dating 



