ON THE LAW OF EVIDENCE COMPILED AND EDITED BY JOHN HENRY WIGMORE PROFESSOR OF THE LAW OF EVIDENCE IN SECOND EDITION BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1913 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION In this second edition a number of radical changes have been made. (1) The preliminary statements of fact, as found in the original reports, have been included. (2) The arguments of counsel, whenever published in the original reports, have been included, in salient extracts. (3) Some history of each principal rule, as well as some modern critical comment on it, has been given a place, by short extracts printed in smaller type. (4) The total number of cases and extracts has been increased by more than one fifth; the total number of pages has been increased by more than one half. (5) Perhaps one half of the former cases have been replaced by different cases. (6) The distribution of the cases, in time and locality, has been changed. About one fourth are English, and three fourths are American. Of the American cases, two fifths are dated since 1895, one quarter since 1904, and one tenth since 1908. The attempt has been to represent all the masters of judicial opinion-writing, of whom so many have in recent years arisen to give distinction to our Supreme Courts. (7) Statutes are represented in thirty-eight passages. Illustrative dialogues from trials are represented in fifty-eight passages. (8) In the Appendices are placed two sets of practical exercises. Experience has shown that, after a scientific study of the individual rules, the student still needs (and can profitably seek in a law-school course) two sorts of practical exercise. (1) He needs to study and discuss problems which range indefinitely over the whole mass of the rules and conceal within themselves multiple possibilities. Thus only can he meet the rules under the guise in which they really present themselves at a trial. (2) He needs to do something himself, by way of making or opposing an offer of evidence, as |