the art of preparing writings to effect the transference or conveyance from one person to another of any piece of property or valuable right. It is sometimes applied in a restricted sense to the cumbrous forms which the feudal system has rendered necessary for the transference and tenure of landed property. When left to shape itself by individual practice, without legislative intervention, there were several causes rendering such conveyancing cumbrous and complex. The theory of the feudal tenures and hierarchy remaining unchanged throughout the social revolution which had virtually abolished superiority and vassalage, and brought land out of feudality into ordinary commerce, it became necessary to retain the feudal ceremonies of the middle ages, and to adapt them by fictions and explanations to modern exigencies. Hence, eight years have not yet passed since, in Scotland, when a field was bought and sold, a party of men assembled on it, and went through the old form of symbolic investiture by the delivery of so much earth and stone from the superior bailiff to the vassal's attorney, who took instruments and had the whole recorded at length by a notary of the empire. In England, from the want of the general system of registration known in Scotland, the complexities of conveyancing had become so inextricable, that one of the most approved forms of transference was a fictitious suit and judgment of possession called a fine and recovery. To these innate sources of complexity must be added the timidity of conveyancers, who, afraid to commit themselves by attempting to abbreviate or reconstruct the forms which they find in existence, repeat them with additions from time to time as new circumstances must be provided for. Hence, to keep conveyancing within rational bounds, the legislature must interfere from time to time to sweep away excrencences, and provide brief and simple forms. This, however, is a task which cannot be easily accomplished, since it requires the very highest legal skill to adjust simple forms to all exigencies, and anticipate the various shapes in which property may fall to be dealt with. This service has been on various occasions performed by distinguished lawyers; and, while it is productive of the greatest benefits to society, it is one of the public services least susceptible of popular appreciation. In 1834 the act abolishing fines and recoveries created a reform of this kind in the conveyancing of England, and a series of statutes passed in 1847 purified and simplified the conveyancing of Scotland.