ORAL ARGUMENT OF SIR RICHARD WEBSTER, Q. C. M. P. 509 



The President. — You mean pigeons not fed by the hand of man. 



Sir Richard Webster. — Well there are and there are not — as a 

 matter of fact speaking of these pigeons if they canuot get food in very 

 hard times in the iiekls they woukl be fed in the dove-cot, and indeed 

 the way they are induced to come to the dove-cot in the first instance 

 is that food is scattered and they are attracted to it by the art of man. 

 But my point is, and I challenge my learned friend to contradict it, 

 that there is no case of the doctrine of animus revertendi being applied, 

 except where the animal has previous to its departure been in some 

 place in which possession has been or could be in fact taken. I have 

 all the authorities under my hand and you will remember them — the 

 geese that fed out of the man's hand and were driven away by the 

 Defendant's dog which had twice been brought back and said to be 

 so tame they fed out of the man's hand: the bees in their hive: the 

 pigeons, as 1 have already said, in their dove-cot or house: the deer 

 which have been made so tame that they will go into an enclosure or 

 stable where they could be kept if it was desired to keep them, and 

 have been so accustomed to it by the hand of man that they come back 

 intending, as Saviguy puts it, and I cannot put it better than it is put 

 in page 108. "To return to the spot where their possessor keeps 

 them." 



Now what is the case made to day? The case made to-day is that 

 migratory instinct is equivalent to animus revertendi, that is to say the 

 fact that the animal, the seal, in the spring of the year, comes to the 

 land — either the male from sexual instincts, or the female to be deliv- 

 ered of its young — that it is the habit of coming to and fro to the land 

 for a limited portion of the year and then returning to the sea — it is 

 said that that migratory instinct in equivalent to an animus revertendi. 



Now I appeal, Mr. President, to you and to every member of this Tri- 

 bunal, as a lawyer, and I appeal to their impartial judgment that they 

 can not only find no authority, but not even a vestige of an authority 

 for the suggestion that migratory instincts are sufficient to give a prop- 

 erty in animals on the ground that that is an animus revertendi. Sir, if 

 that be the case there are literally speaking in England (I do not know 

 enough about the United States to speak of them) hundreds of kinds 

 bii'ds that in their migration come back to the same identical spot — to 

 the same tree and year after year make their nests in the same place or 

 repair the old nests and occupy the same place, and those birds may go 

 away at other times of the year from equally natural instincts either 

 climate or from some other cause — because the food does not suit 

 them — and yet not only is there no trace of such a doctrine, but when- 

 ever the matter has come up it has been pointed out that migratory 

 instincts are not sufficient. Every authority that my learned friend 

 has cited supports my contention. I remember one — though I could go 

 through all, but they were exhaustively examined by the Attorney Gen- 

 eral — Hammond v. Mockett where the crows, or rooks as they ought to 

 be called, built reguhirly in a man's trees, came regularly there and 

 were in the habit of frequenting those trees in his property. It was 

 held on the same principle we have been discussing, though there was 

 not only the strongest animus revertendi but an indisputable animus 

 revertendi, that there was no property in them. 



Mr. Justice Harlan. — Was not that mainly on the ground that the 

 Court said it was an animal that was not useful but a nuisance? 



Sir liiCHARD Webster. — No, certainly not. I say the whole of the 

 earlier part of the judgment proceeds entirely upon the question of 

 property. There being no i^roperty in the animal at all as being an 



