not intended to be, and is not, a regulation of commerce among the States. Plumley v. Massachusetts, 461.

3. The statute of Massachusetts of March 10, 1891, c. 58, "to prevent deception in the manufacture and sale of imitation butter," in its application to the sales of oleomargarine, artificially colored so as to cause it to look like yellow butter and brought into Massachusetts, is not in conflict with the clause of the Constitution of the United States investing Congress with power to regulate commerce among the several States. Ib.

4. Leisy v. Hardin, 135 U. S. 100, 124, is restrained in its application to the case there actually presented for determination, and held not to justify the broad contention that a State is powerless to prevent the sale of articles of food manufactured in or brought from another State, and subjects of traffic or commerce, if their sale may cheat the people into purchasing something they do not intend to buy, and which is wholly different from what its condition and appearance import. Ib.

5. The judiciary of the United States should not strike down a legislative enactment of a State, especially if it has direct connection with the social order, the health and the morals of its people, unless such legislation plainly and palpably violates some right granted or secured by the National Constitution, or encroaches upon the authority delegated to the United States for the attainment of objects of national concern. Ib.

6. When a bridge is lawfully built over a navigable river within the limits of a State, and is maintained as a lawful structure, its owners may at all times have recourse to the courts to protect it; and any relief which may be granted by the court on such application is not a regulation of Texas & Pacific Railway v. Interstate Transportation Co.,

commerce.

585.

7. Section 439 of the Penal Code of California, making it a misdemeanor for a person in that State to procure insurance for a resident in the State for an insurance company not incorporated under its laws and which had not filed the bond required by the laws of the State relative to insurance, is not a regulation of commerce, and does not conflict with the Constitution of the United States, when enforced against the agent of a New York firm in California who, through his principals and by telegram, procures for a resident in California, applying for it there, marine insurance on an ocean steamer, from an insurance company incorporated under the laws of Massachusetts, and which had not filed the bond required by the laws of California. Hooper v. California, 648.

8. While a State cannot exclude from its limits a corporation engaged in interstate or foreign commerce, or a corporation in the employment of the general government, by the imposition of inadmissible conditions, it may subject it to a property taxation incidentally affecting its occu

pation in the same way that business of individuals or other corporations is affected by common governmental burdens. Postal Telegraph Cable Co. v. Adams, 688.

9. The tax imposed by the laws of Mississippi, (Code of 1880, c. 10, § 585; Sess. Laws 1888, c. 3,) when enforced against a Telegraph Company, organized under the laws of another State and engaged in interstate commerce within Mississippi, being graduated according to the amount and value of the company's property measured by miles, and being in lieu of taxes directly levied on the property, is a tax which it is within the power of the State to impose; and the exercise of that power, as expounded by the highest judicial tribunal of the State, does not amount to a regulation of interstate commerce, or put an unconstitutional restraint thereon. Ib.

See JURISDICTION, A, 16.

CONTRACT.

1. Where the railroad bridge of a bridge company and the railroads of several railroad companies form a continuous line of railway transportation, the liability of two of the railroad companies to pay the bridge company a certain proportion of tolls upon the bridge, and of deficiencies therein, according to a contract with the bridge company, executed by another of the railroad companies for the benefit and at the request of these two, they undertaking to assume all the liabilities and to be entitled to all the benefits of the bridge contract, "as if the same had been specifically named in and made a part of the ninth article of" a lease of its railroad from it to them, by which article they agreed to assume and carry out certain contracts of transportation over railroads of other companies, is not affected by the termination of the lease by eviction or otherwise. Pittsburgh, Cincinnati & St. Louis Railway Co. v. Keokuk & Hamilton Bridge Co., 156.

2. Pittsburgh &c. Railway Co. v. Keokuk & Hamilton Bridge Co., 131 U. S. 371, followed. Ib.

3. An agreement by a Finance Company to undertake the work of the reorganization of a railway company and the procuring of a loan to it is held to have been executed by it so far as to entitle it to a commission of ten per cent on the par value of the bonds issued by the company, payable in such bonds at par. Burke v. American Loan & Trust

Co., 534.

COURT AND JURY.

1. It is common practice and no error to recall a jury, after they have been in deliberation for a length of time, for the purpose of ascertaining what difficulties they have in the consideration of the case, and of making proper efforts to assist them in their solution, and the time at which such recall shall be made must be left to the discretion of the trial court. Allis v. United States, 117.

2. There is nothing in the record to show that the court in this case
abused this discretion. Ib.

3. The rule repeated that in a Federal court the presiding judge may
express to the jury his opinion as to the weight of evidence. lb.
4. In making such a statement he is under no obligation to recapitulate
all the items of the evidence, nor even all bearing on a single ques-
tion. Ib.

COURT OF CLAIMS.

See JURISDICTION, E.

COURT OF PRIVATE LAND CLAIMS.

See JURISDICTION, A, 3, 5.

CRIMINAL LAW.

1. When the record in a criminal case brought here by the defendant is
meagre, containing only a small portion of the evidence, this court
must assume, as the verdict was sustained by the court below, that
the testimony was sufficient to establish defendant's guilt. Allis v.
United States, 117.

2. When a defendant is tried on an indictment charging false entries at

different times running through several months, it is no error to
admit evidence of such acts during the whole period, although he
may be found guilty of only one such act. Ib.

3. Evidence having been given bearing upon one such alleged false entry,
made at a period considerably later than the only one of which the
defendant was found guilty, no advantage can be taken by the de-
fendant here of the refusal of the court below to allow a cross ques-
tion touching such evidence. Ib.

4. Courts of justice are invested with authority to discharge a jury from
giving any verdict, whenever in their opinion, taking all the circum-
stances into consideration, there is a manifest necessity for the act, or
the ends of public justice would otherwise be defeated, and to order
a trial by another jury; and a defendant is not thereby twice put in
jeopardy, within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment to the Consti-
tution of the United States. Thompson v. United States, 271.
5. Sundry errors in the charge of the court below commented on, and Gourko
v. United States, 153 U. S. 183, approved and applied to the issues in
this case, viz.: (1) A person who has an angry altercation with 'an-
other person, such as to lead him to believe that he may require the
means of self-defence in case of another encounter, may be justified
in the eye of the law, in arming himself for self-defence; and if, on
meeting his adversary on a subsequent occasion, he kills him, but not
in necessary self-defence, his crime may be that of manslaughter or
murder, as the circumstances on the occasion of the killing make it
the one or the other; (2) if, looking alone at those circumstances,

his crime be that of manslaughter, it is not converted into murder by reason of his having previously armed himself. Ib.

6. Pointer v. United States, 151 U. S. 396, sustained and applied to the point that it is not error to join distinct offences in one indictment, in separate accounts, against the same person. Ingraham v. United States, 434. 7. A person who presents to the Third Auditor of the Treasury what purports to be an affidavit before a justice of the peace in support of a fraudulent claim against the government, is estopped to deny that' the document was not an affidavit when presented in evidence in criminal proceedings against him for such fraudulent act. Ib. 8. It is not necessary, in the first instance, in order to prove such offence, to produce the commission of the justice, or to introduce other official evidence of his appointment. Ib.

9. In an indictment for a statutory offence, while it is doubtless true that it is not always sufficient to use simply the language of the statute in describing the offence, yet, if such language is, according to the natural import of the words, fully descriptive of the offence, then ordinarily it is sufficient. Potter v. United States, 438.

10. A charge in an indictment that the defendant was president of a national bank, and as such on a day and at a place named unlawfully, knowingly, and wilfully certified a certain cheque, (describing it,) drawn upon the bank, and that the drawer did not then and there have on deposit with the bank an amount of money equal to the amount specified in the cheque, is a sufficient averment of the offence described in Rev. Stat. § 5208, the punishment for which is provided for in the act of July 12, 1882, c. 290, 22 Stat. 162, 166. Ib. 11. As it is of the essence of the offence against those acts that the criminal act should have been done wilfully, a person charged with it is entitled to have submitted to the jury, on the question of "wilful" wrongdoing, evidence of an agreement on the part of the officers of the bank that it should be treated as a loan from day to day, secured by ample collateral, and that for the cheque certified each day there was deposited each day an ample amount of cash. Ib.

12. In a criminal trial the burden of proof is on the government, and the defendant is entitled to the benefit of a reasonable doubt; and when testimony contradictory or explanatory is introduced by the defendant, it becomes a part of the burden resting upon the government, to make the case so clear that there is no reasonable doubt as to the inferences and presumptions claimed to flow from the evidence. lb. 13. An averment in an indictment for murder that the defendant is "a white person and not an Indian" is sufficient to show that he is outside of the first two clauses of Rev. Stat. § 2146. Westmoreland v. United States, 545.

14. An averment in an indictment that the defendant was not a citizen of the Indian Territory will be sustained as a sufficient averment that he does not come within the provisions of article 38 of the treaty of April

28, 1866, with the Choctaws and Chickasaws, 14 Stat. 769, 779, when no challenge of the indictment in this respect is made prior to the trial, and the question is only made by motion in arrest of judgment. Ib.

15. A charge in an indictment which charges that the defendant administered to the deceased strychnine and other poisons with the unlawful and felonious intent to take his life, and that so administered they did have the effect of causing death, is sufficient. Ib.

16. In charging the causing of death by poisoning, it is unnecessary to aver that the poison was taken into the stomach of the deceased. Ib.

CUSTOMS DUTIES.

1. In an action to recover duties alleged to have been illegally exacted, the burden is on the importer to overcome the presumption of a legal collection by proof that their exaction was unlawful. Erhardt v. Schroeder, 124.

2. Although the appraisement of goods by customs officers is not ordinarily open to judicial review, that rule does not apply when the value is determined by a classification made by the officer. Ib.

3. The provision in Schedule F, of the act of March 3, 1883, c. 121, 22 Stat. 488, 503, imposing a duty upon leaf tobacco, evidently requires that 85 per cent of half leaves are to be of the requisite size and necessary fineness of texture for wrappers, or, in other words, that each of 85 half leaves out of 100 half leaves must contain a portion sufficiently fine in texture, of the requisite size to make at least one wrapper. Ib. 4. The further provision in that schedule, "of which more than 100 leaves are required to weigh a pound," refers to whole leaves, in their natural state. Ib.

5. The remedy of an importer on a question of valuation is to call for a reappraisement; though, if his contention be that a jurisdictional question exists, he may make his protest, pointing out the defect, and stand upon it as the ground of refusal to pay the increased duty. Origet v. Hedden, 228.

6. What an importer's agent says to an assistant appraiser, or conversations had subsequently to the appraisement, are not competent evidence in an action like this. Ib.

7. The court below properly excluded a question propounded to the merchant appraiser as to whether or not he and the general appraiser did not agree to apply the valuation of one case in each invoice to the entire importation of which it was a part; and also the question whether or not those goods in the several cases were all of the same character as to value. Ib.

8. Reappraisers may avail themselves of clerical assistance to average appraisements given by different experts, when it appears that it was for their guidance only. Ib.

9. Under the plaintiff's protest the question is not open that Rev. Stat.