Reports of Cases in the Vice Admiralty of the Province of New York and in the Court of Admiralty of the State of New York 1716-1788, with an historical introduction and appendix. Edited by Charles Merrill Hough, LL.D., United States Circuit Judge. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1925. pp. xxxvi, 311. Index. $5.00. This volume is a collection of the surviving decisions of the Vice Admiralty Court of the Province of New York, and of its successor, the Admiralty Court of the State of New York. While it is a local product in the sense that all the decisions here reported were made on Manhattan Island, the collection is of far more than local interest because of the influence exerted by the admiralty courts of our chief maritime city upon the development of admiralty jurisdiction and practice in the courts of the United States. The cases are cast in familiar modern form. The editor, Judge Charles M. Hough, of the United States Circuit Court, has prepared an excellent introduction to the collection, and has also supplied syllabi and statements of fact, while the order of the court or the opinion of the judge is taken from the official records. The first Vice Admiralty judge whose rulings are recorded was Lewis Morris, who was acting judge in admiralty from 1715 to 1721. He had commission from England, but exercised admiralty jurisdiction under his designation as Chief Justice of the Province,-an office to which was appointed by the Governor because he is a sensible honest man and able to live without a salary. A contemporary said of him that no man in the Colony equalled him in the knowledge of the law and the arts of intrigue. Francis Harrison (1721-1735) and Daniel Horsmanden (1735-1738) were succeeded by Lewis Morris, Jr., son of the first Morris. He was appointed under the Great Seal of the High Court of Admiralty and continued to serve until 1762, when in turn was succeeded by his son Richard. The Morris succession terminated with the establishment of the State Admiralty Court in 1775. Richard having declined to continue under a State appointment, the post was given to his kinsman, Lewis Graham, who served until the establishment of the Federal courts in 1789. The decisions included in this volume are chiefly the work of Lewis Morris, Jr., and as they lie in the period of the Seven Years' War they are largely devoted to questions of prize law. For the history of American admiralty this volume is of prime importance. Fragmentary though they are, the admiralty records of the Province of New York are more complete than those of any other American colony. Furthermore the admiralty law of the United States rests largely upon the foundations laid by the admiralty judges of that Province, although neither they nor the practitioners who appeared before them gave much evidence of knowledge of admiralty law as applied in England. This is not surprising when we remember that until about the middle of the eighteenth century it was unusual to find in the common-law courts judges who had been trained in the common law. Being unhampered by much learning, the law of admiralty was administered by the courts in New York with more freedom than by the