from Howell’s Annotated Statutes. His work was based upon original research, and reference to those volumes. In preparing the copy of such notes and annotations, he had the original volumes continually at hand, and continually referred thereto; and in the preparation of such work he used Howell’s Annotated Statutes only in the same way in which he used the other authorized compilations of the laws of the state. For the preparation of the copy for the printer, he was furnished by the secretary of state with three complete sets of Howell’s Annotated Statutes, and the same number of all the Session Laws after the year 1869. These sets of Howell’s Statutes and Session Laws were used by him in preparing copy for the printer; and in the preparation of such copy he took from the pages of such sets of Howell’s Statutes and the Session Laws furnished to him, as best suited his convenience, the text of the general laws then in force, and pasted the same upon sheets of paper, leaving sufficient margin for the addition of such sidenotes and footnotes as became necessary for him to add in the completion of his work. So far as any such text was taken from the pages of Howell’s Annotated Statutes, only the bare text of the statutes and the sidenotes, as they had long before been printed and published in the pages of the Session Laws of the state and of the prior compilations, were used by him; and in no instance were the annotations contained in Howell’s volumes, or the notations of enactment of laws, or the amendment of sections, or consecutive section numbering utilized by him. The use of the pages of Howell’s Annotated Statutes in the preparation of the text was necessary, and the three sets of statutes were furnished him by the state for such use, because the state could not furnish copies of the older session laws, they having been long before out of print; and he used such text only so far as it contained the statutes as enacted, and did not use any part of the work of Howell. In order to insure perfect accuracy, it became necessary, on account of the numerous errors in the text of the laws as printed in Howell’s Statutes, to compare the same carefully with the original prints of the statutes as issued by the state, which involved great and tedious labor, and resulted in the discovery of errors, which errors and variations were officially reported by him. In the preparation of the digest of the decisions of the supreme court, to be published in connection with the various sections of the general laws of the state, he did not follow the plan or arrangement of similar annotations in Howell’s Annotated Statutes, but, instead thereof, he adopted the plan of placing all the annotations to each section immediately following the end thereof, and having the same printed in a double column on the page, instead of in lines running the full width of such page. He classified and arranged such annotations and digests in groups, with original and appropriate side heads for convenience in reference. In preparing the digest of the decisions of the supreme court of Michigan interpreting such statutes, and upon the various subjects involved in the sections of the general laws of the state, he continually referred to the volumes of decisions as published under the authority of the state, framing and writing his digest and condensations from the original reports. In many instances, when the same met his approval, he copied the headnotes or syllabi from those reports. In many other instances he used
