182 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Major Phinney. Can I do so without liability to prose 

 ciition ? 



Judge Bennett. Of course ; else you could not do it. 

 When I say you can do it, I mean you can do it lawfully. I 

 will refer Major Phinney, who is a man of the law, to two 

 decisions of the Supreme Court (in 5 Metcalf and 21 Pick- 

 ering), in which that very question came up. 



Question. If a neighbor builds a fire on his land, and it 

 runs across his land, and burns up the boundary-fence be- 

 tween him and another man, is the man who builds the fire 

 responsible for the damage ? 



Judge Bennett. That depends entirely on the question 

 whether a jury would say he was negligent in building that 

 fire at that time, or in managing it after he built it. If he 

 should build it on a very windy day, when it was dangerous 

 for any man to build a fire, I suppose they would convict 

 him of negligence. Or, if he did not have men enough to 

 watch it after he built it, they would be likely to find the 

 same. But he has a right to build a fire, unless he is 

 negligent. 



Question. Are the chains and ox-bows used in a barn 

 for tying cattle conveyed with a deed of the barn ? and 

 in a case where there is a chimney with pipes running down 

 three or four stories, connected with stoves in the lower 

 part of the house, are the pipes conveyed with the house ? 



Judge Bennett. I think the ox-bows, &c., would go with 

 the oxen, and not with the barn, unless affixed to the barn : 

 therefore the deed would not convey them. The pipes would 

 not go, unless they are so attached to or plastered into the 

 building that they cannot be separated from it without de- 

 stroying more or less the chimney to which they are attached. 

 A cook-stove, with a pipe running into the chimney in the 

 ordinary way, does not go with a deed of the house ; but the 

 owner may remove it. 



Question. I would like to inquire what constitutes im- 

 provement of land, — whether the chopping of wood from a 

 wood-lot for family use, or cutting a set of bean-poles for use 

 in the garden, constitutes an " improvement " of that land. 



Judge Bennett. I should think not. I don't think the 

 law would require a man to keep up a mile of fence because 

 lie had cut a few bean-poles on his land. 



