Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The practice of the Privy Council in judicial matters has been enormously simplified since the publication of Messrs. Safford and Wheeler's comprehensive work on that subject in 1901. In the first place, as the result, perhaps, of suggestions made by the learned authors of that book, the rules of appeal from the courts in most of the colonies, possessions and foreign jurisdictions of the Crown have been standardised, and now conform to a single model; and secondly, the rules of the Judicial Committee itself have been consolidated. Moreover, the jurisdiction of the Privy Council in relation to the extension of Letters Patent for inventions has been transferred to the Chancery Courts; and the number of courts from which appeals can be brought directly has been reduced by the federation of the South African colonies in the Union of South Africa, and the restriction of the right of appeal to cases which have already gone up to the appellate division of the Supreme Court of the Union. In view of these reforms and changes it has been found possible to reduce by more than half the big evil of a big book, and to replace the elephantinus liber of Messrs. Safford and Wheeler by a more concise treatise without, it is hoped, a loss of comprehensiveness. The plan of the earlier work has been followed to a certain extent; but at the same time very large modifications have been made, and the whole book had to be rewritten.
