Note 28:1 — Chapter I

Perhaps few authors afford so many curious illustrations of the substitution of fanciful analogy for the severe logic of a practical lawyer, as Lord Kames—e. g. when, in his essays on British antiquities, he identifies hereditary descent with the law of gravitation, and the inclination of the mind to continue downwards in a straight line, as a stone falls from a height; so that, "in tracing out a family, the mind descends by degrees from the father, first to the eldest son, and so downwards in the order of age:" pleasant enough speculations, yet not likely to serve any good purpose in practical law.