1 84 THE RABBIT 



the purpose of removing his crop is an ' occupier ' 

 within the meaning of the Act, and entitled to kill 

 ground game on the land whereon the crop is stand- 

 ing, is a question which has not been decided. It 

 might well have been raised in the case of Lunt v. Hill, 

 in the Nantwich County Court in January, 1895, but 

 the only issue tried was whether an assault had been 

 committed by the defendant in attempting to take from 

 the plaintiff, the purchaser of the way-going crop, the 

 rabbits which he had shot without any authority in 

 writing from the tenant, and without a gun licence.^ 



The term ' occupier ' will include joint tenants ; 

 their powers of appointment of persons to kill or take 

 ground game could only be jointly exercised ; but 

 whether (as is probably the case) each could exercise 

 the rights of an occupier in killing ground game by 

 himself is a point which, so far as we are aware, has 

 not been judicially determined. 



Before proceeding to subsection 2 of the first sec- 

 tion, it may be well to emphasise the fact that the 

 authority given by an ' occupier ' to kill rabbits must 

 be in writing. In a case decided at Carlisle in October, 

 1 89 1 (Carter Wood v. Rule & Rule) a shooting tenant 

 summoned two game-dealers for unlawfully killing 

 rabbits at night. They pleaded authority. The occu- 



' See a report of the case in The i^/^/t/ of January 26, 1895. 



