the procedure of halimotes as much like the common law procedure as possible, went far to produce similarity between forms of actions, presentments, verdicts and juries, in both sets of tribunals. But nevertheless, characteristic distinctions remained to show that the import of some institutions brought near each other in this way was widely different. I have said already that the peasant suitors of the halimote are appealed to on questions of law as well as on questions of fact. But the most important point for our present purpose is this: the jurors called to substantiate the claim of a party in a trial are mere representatives of the whole court. The testimony of the court is taken indirectly through their means, and very often resort is had to that testimony without the intermediate stage of a jury. Now this is by no means a trifle from the point of view of legal analysis. The grand and petty juries of the common law are means of information, and nothing more. They form no part of the tribunal, strictly speaking; the court is constituted by the judges, the lawyers commissioned by the king, who adopt this method in investigating the facts before them, because a knowledge of the facts at issue, and an understanding of local conditions surrounding them, is supposed to reside naturally in the country where the facts have taken place[818]. Historically the institution is evolved from examinations of witnesses and experts, and has branched off in France into the close formalism of inquisitorial process. The manorial jury, on the other hand, represents the court, and interchanges with it[819]. For this reason, we may speak directly of the court instead of treating of its delegates. And if the verdict of the court is taken, it is not on account of the chance knowledge, the presumable acquaintance of the suitors with facts and conditions, but as a living remembrance of what took place before this same court, or as a re-assertion of its power of regulating the legal standing of the community. The verdict of the suitors is only another form of the entry on the rolls, and both are means of securing the continuity of an institution and not merely of providing information to outsiders. Of course, claims may not be always reduced to such elementary forms that they can be decided by a mere reference to memory, the memory of the constituted body of the court. A certain amount of reasoning and inference may be involved in their settlement, a set of juridical doctrines is necessary to provide the general principles of such reasoning. And in both respects the manorial court is called upon to act. It is considered as the repository of legal lore, and the exponent of its applications. This means that the court is, what its name implies, a tribunal and not a set of private persons called upon to assist a judge by their knowledge of legal details or material facts[820]. [Communal testimony.]