PREFACE.

THIS work was written for the benefit of practising lawyers, and with a view to aid them in the solution of vexed questions relating to railway law with which they may have to deal. With this single purpose in view, I have examined many thousand cases involving questions relating to the topics treated, have eliminated their doctrine, and as far as practicable stated the gist of them in the text or the notes. The most important topics have been carefully and fully treated, such as relate to corporate powers, ultra vires, pooling contracts, the duties and liabilities of railway companies as carriers of passengers, negligence, tickets, the expulsion of passengers, the powers and duties of directors and other officers, eminent domain, municipal subscriptions, stockholders, etc. In the treatment of these topics, as well as others not enumerated, I have given the gist of many cases by way of illustration, and have endeavored as far as possible to make the work useful and practical. Having been for several years, before I commenced the work of writing text-books, attorney for a leading railway company, by a varied and extensive experience I learned some of the needs of the profession in a work upon this subject, and my aim has been to supply such a work as this experience suggested to be necessary for attorneys both for and against railway

companies. How far I have succeeded in accomplishing this purpose is not for me to say, but is for the profession to judge, when practical tests are applied to the work. Upon a subject involving so wide a field as that relating to railways, it could not of course be expected that I should treat it in all its details; I have confined myself as far as possible to those topics which are peculiar to this class of corporations, or to the peculiar application to them by the courts, of the law of corporations. If I have omitted anything which ought to have been embraced in the work, it is not because I have sought to shirk or evade any labor incident to the preparation of such a work, but is chargeable wholly as an error of judgment.

In using the table of cases, it should be borne in mind. that courts and text-books sometimes cite cases with the full name of the railroad corporation, sometimes with the brief or popular name, and often merely as "Railroad." So far as possible, different citations of the same case, from different sources, have been placed under the full and proper name of the road; but as it has not been always practicable to trace up the cases inadequately cited, the reader who cannot find the case he seeks under its full title, will do well to look also under the word "Railroad."

H. G. WOOD.

BOSTON, Sept. 1, 1885.