Present Aim and Scope of Work. This book aims especially to familiarize the engineering student with the major principles of common law relating to contracts, and touches other legal branches only incidentally and so far as will materially assist him to grasp the doctrines Of contract law applying to that subject. TO many engineers the only justification for this book may lie in an acceptable restatement Of the principles-underlying successful specification writing. The great importance of this field has been recognized, and fully a third Of the book devoted to it. But with the present commercial tendency Of engineering, it is believed that the contracts Of business demand the modern engineer's attention about equally with those Of engineering construction. About one-third of the book, therefore, deals with commercial contracts, while the balance deals with elementary principles common to all contracts, and the interrelations between contracts, torts, agency, and real property.