which have no importance for French law except from the point
of view of procedure, privileges and hypothecs, as in the ancient
_coutumes_ of France, and prescription. It is, _mutatis mutandis_,
practically the same division as that of Blackstone's Commentaries.

Of late years other objections have been expressed; serious omissions
have been pointed out in the Code; it has not given to personal property
the importance which it has acquired in the course of the 19th century;
it makes no provision for dealing with the legal relations between
employers and employed which modern complex undertakings involve; it
does not treat of life insurance, &c. But this only proves that it could
not foretell the future, for most of these questions are concerned with
economic phenomena and social relations which did not exist at the time
when it was framed. The Code needed revising and completing, and this
was carried out by degrees by means of numerous important laws. In 1904,
after the celebration of the centenary of the Code Civil, an
extra-parliamentary commission was nominated to prepare a revision of
it, and at once began the work.

The influence of the Code Civil has been very great, not only in France
but also abroad. Belgium has preserved it, and the Rhine provinces only
ceased to be subject to it on the promulgation of the civil code of the
German empire. Its ascendancy has been due chiefly to the clearness of
its provisions, and to the spirit of equity and equality which inspires
them. Numerous more recent codes have also taken it as a model: the
Dutch code, the Italian, and the code of Portugal; and, more remotely,
the Spanish code, and those of the Central and South American republics.
In the present day it is rivalled by the German civil code, which,
having been drawn up at the end of the 19th century, naturally does not
show the same lacunae or omissions. It is inspired, however, by a very
different spirit, and the French code does not suffer altogether by
comparison with it either in substance or in form.

See _Le Code Civil, livre du centenaire_ (Paris, 1904), a collection
of essays by French and foreign lawyers. (J. P. E.)

CODIAEUM, a small genus of plants belonging to the natural order
Euphorbiaceae. One species, _C. variegatum_, a native of Polynesia, is
cultivated in greenhouses, under the name of croton, for the sake of its
leaves, which are generally variegated with yellow, and are often
twisted o