Passing mention may be made of two more limited but very useful conventions concluded in Switzerland,--one for the extermination of phylloxera and the other for the regulation of the transportation of goods by railway. The first had its origin at a conference of persons interested in the culture of the vine, held at Lausanne in 1877, and a convention to establish a union was signed at Bern in 1878 by several states, with the object of promoting joint protection against a disease which had caused such serious losses to vine-growers. Bern was agreed upon as the seat of all future meetings, and this union, which continues to obtain adhesions, is in active and beneficial operation. The Railway Transportation Union is, from the very nature and difficulty of the matters involved, one of slow evolution, but conferences are from time to time held, and its friends do not despair that it will ultimately result in the text of an international union with its bureau at Bern; this union, however, cannot expect to embrace any but the continental states. A most important event in the history of these unions was the conclusion, at Paris, in 1883, after ten years’ negotiation, of the Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, with a supplemental protocol signed at Rome in 1886. By the terms of the convention Switzerland assumed the responsibility for the management of the central administration, and the bureau joined the others at Bern. There are sixteen states in this union, the last accession being that of the United States, which was made on the 30th of May, 1887. Lastly, and one very properly following close on that for the protection of industrial property, came the Union for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Property. This, the result of conferences in 1884, 1885, and 1886 at Bern, was secured by the signature of the convention on the 9th of September, 1886, and the ratification exchanged 5th of December, 1887, with ten adhering states. The central bureau, like those preceding it, was placed under the high authority of the Swiss Confederation, and is consolidated with its sister Bureau of Industrial Property. It issues an ably edited monthly journal, _Le Droit d’Auteur_. The failure of the United States to adhere to this convention, it was apprehended by many, would deprive the Union of much of its contemplated value and practical results. This sentiment found expression in terms of the most sincere and respectful regret on the part of the delegates representing the signing states. At the Bern Conference of 1886, to which the writer was commissioned as a consultative delegate, he submitted the following statement explanatory of the attitude of the United States towards the conference: