to find their way without a clue to the affairs of
any particular John Brown.  The clue is in the
hands of Brown himself.  Each property has
its own page upon the register, that is to say,
in one of many ample volumes.  On the
duplicate title, held by the owner, volume and
page of the original are noted.  All the successive
transactions relative to the same property
are successively recorded on the same page,
which is found only by means of information
from the holder of the duplicate.  Dead entries
of rights that have been superseded, are crossed
out with the pen.  Thus, when its page is found,
the whole legal history of an estate is to be read
in a few minutes.  Loss of the duplicate would
not be fatal if the owner could remember (or
possessed a memorandum of) the page and
volume of the register in which his right is
shown.  Loss of duplicate, of memorandum,
and of memory, in this matter would not be
fatal if the owner of the property remembered
the date, within a few days, of any transaction
connected with it: because reference to the
transaction, as entered in the day book kept by
the registrar, would show it, with the appendix
of a direction to the page of the register, which
then must have been known.  Failing everything,
the unlucky landowner is only in the position of
an Englishman whose title deeds are lost, but he
has had, and he still has, more chances of
recovering his right.

Fraudulent registration is prevented by
demand of a surrender of the existing instrument
of title, for the purpose of endorsement.
Claims to bring land under the Real Property
Act are submitted to solicitors appointed for the
purpose, reported on to a board, scrutinised,
advertised, open to the entry of caveat, and in
case of resistance subjected to the decision of
the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court hears
a contest, once for every three hundred and
seventy uncontested applications. Any one who
pleases may adopt the old methods of procedure
upon counsel of lawyers, but in practice it is
found that men work for themselves, using the
simple every-day agencies of the Post-office and
the electric telegraph.  They transact their
business safely and easily in the directest manner
by help of the Post-office.  And this they do,
though they may live two hundred miles away,
or in the adjacent colonies of Victoria and New
South Wales.

A PHYSICIAN'S DREAMS.

               II.

NEXT to the hand-book of sensation, more or
less interpreted according to rule, the greater or
less degree of consciousness that we retain in
dreaming is the truest key to the phenomena of
dreams.  In the morning, when sleep is worn
very thin, we are apt to mingle the perception
of our real state with the phantasmagoria of our
imaginary state. Most people have dreamed
that uncomfortable dream of finding themselves
in a large society, and suddenly becoming aware
that their night-dress is their only clothing. Of
course, the dream is the union of two ideas—the
true idea, of being, as you are, in your nightshirt:
the false idea, of being at a party.
Observe, also, that in such a dream you yourself
are very awkward, ashamed, and uncomfortable;
but, invariably, the large party take no notice of
you. This opposes the remark of some
philosopher (I think Mackintosh), who affirms that you
never feel surprise in dreams.  I am often
surprised in my dreams.  It is a frequent dream
with me that a dog, or some other animal, speaks
to me with a human voice.  At this phenomenon
I am always, at first, surprised, and then
perplexed to know whether I am in a dream or
not.  According to my degree of consciousness,
I say to myself, "Now this is a dream!" or,
"Well now, this time I don't think I am dreaming;
I hear and see so very plainly."   I must
confess, however, that in my dreams I retain a
degree of consciousness which I find, on
conferring notes with other people, to be unusual,
combined (necessarily) with a degree of volition
which it is also uncommon to retain in sleep.  I
am sometimes able to prolong my dreams at will.
Sometimes I say to myself, "Now I am going to
wake;" and, if the dream be agreeable, I
retard the waking.

All my remarks go to prove that there is no
reason why "thought-impressing," or any other
rare phenomenon, or, finally, those impressions
called "supernatural" (as if there could be
anything supernatural in nature!), should occur
more easily or frequently during sleep than in
any other state of our vital being.  Reminding
my reader of this my end and aim, I throw
together a few more facts relative to dreaming,
which go to prove my point, even while they
are apparently against it.

Experience, the great guide and holder
together of individual life, is never falsified in
dreams.  It may, through imagination, put
things oddly together; in a dream I may
imagine a dog talks; but the dog I have seen,
and the man I have heard talk.  "Nihil in
sensu quod non in intellectu prius fuit," holds
good even of chimeras; and when, in their
waking dreams, men have invented what the
guardian of the cathedral of Dijon, who showed
me in the church the ancient figure of a dragon,
called "une bête fabuleuse, qui n'existe pas
aujourd'hui,"  the monster is but made up of
known parts.  Moreover, dreams that oddly
connect different experiences are rarer than
might be supposed; only, from their striking
nature, we recollect them better. Out of
experience we never step. The blind from birth, as
I have ascertained, never dream of seeing; they
only dream of being led about, of hearing music,
conversation, &c. They never saw a chimera in
their sleep.  Besides, the mind, in dreams,
generally takes the longest and best known objects,
according to its longest and most general
experience.  Thus, if we dream of the dead, we very,
very rarely, dream of them as dead; we dream
of them as they habitually were during life. The
mind, always reluctant to conceive death, and,
indeed, unable—for death does not lie within its