From the general tenor of these communications, as well as from other sources, I gather that the ancient office of port-reeve is rapidly falling into desuetude, though in some comparatively rare instances the Port-reeve still remains the chief officer of the borough, and is invested with considerable power and privileges. Thus, in an obliging communication which I received from the Port-Reeve of Tavistock, that gentleman is good enough to inform me that he not only still remains the returning officer of the borough, but that he also enjoys a seat on the County Bench, as J.P. for Devon, solely by right and in virtue of his office as Port-reeve, a fact which I conceive is sufficiently rare and interesting to merit being placed on record. The Salic Law. BY CHARLES MACKAY, LL.D., _Author of “The Gaelic Etymology of the Languages of Western Europe.”_ THE Salic law, which still prevails in some parts of Europe, is supposed to have been instituted in the sixth century by Clovis, or Pharamond, King of the Franks. In Shakespeare’s play of “King Henry V.,” Act i. Scene 2, King Henry, addressing the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely, thus asks them to expound the Salic Law:-- “My learned Lord, we pray you to proceed: And justly and religiously unfold, Why the law Salique, that they have in France Or should, or should not, bar us in our claim.” The Archbishop of Canterbury in his reply mentions the ancient tradition that this law was instituted by Pharamond, and continues:-- “The land Salique is in Germany, Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe, Where Charles the Great, having subdued the Saxons, There left behind and settled certain French; Who, holding in disdain the German women, In some dishonest manners of their life, Established then this law--to wit, no female Should be inheritrix in Salique land.” The very prosy speech of the Archbishop, from which this is an extract, bears no trace of the fine hand of Shakespeare, and was copied almost _verbatim_ from Holinshed. President Henault, borrowing from previous writers--who wrote from tradition, without adequate proof or authority for the statements they made or adopted--says that it was Clovis who instituted and signed the Salic Law in A.D. 511, the year of his death. Voltaire says that Clovis could neither read nor write, and that it is uncertain whether his name was Clovis, Clodvic, or Hildovic. Voltaire states also that there are two versions of the text of this Salic Law, each of which differs from the other.