from 1806 to 1851 111

reports. Not all the notes, were used in the later
reports. In 1801 he published a book of "Modern
Entries", an exhaustive collection of forms de-
signed to replace for the bench and bar of the
state the long succession of English books of en-
tries ¹⁷ which had been in use since the early days
of the province. Most of the forms he used were
taken from the records of the Provincial and Gen-
eral Court, and gaps were filled in by use of the
English forms. The work was a painstaking one,
probably the extra occupation of a period of years.

On taking his position as clerk of the Court of
Appeals of the Western Shore, Harris became
custodian of a large accumulation of papers and
records of the older Court of Appeals as well as
of the vaster collection of the Provincial Court
and the General Court of the Western Shore. He
prepared an index, under the names of persons,
of proceedings in the Provincial Court from 1658
to 1776, with brief descriptions of the proceed-
ings ; a work which fills three large folio volumes.
The docket of the Court of Appeals from 1695
to 1790 appears transcribed in his hand. Associa-
ting with himself John McHenry, a young mem-
ber of the bar, he set to work to report a selection
of cases decided chiefly in the Provincial Court
from 1658 to 1776. The papers and records were
examined, note books and opinions of lawyers of
the earlier periods searched out; and in 1809, three
years after Harris became clerk of the Court of
Appeals, the first Maryland report, 1 Harris &
McHenry's Reports, appeared. It was a private
venture of the reporters, as were all the other

17. Holdsworth, V, 383 to 386.