PROPERTY IN THE ALASKAN SEAL HERD. 91 



property in them is conceded to the owner of the spot which they make 

 their home, which is not lost by the temporary departures therefrom. 

 Any killing or capture of these animals by another, having notice of 

 their habits, is aviolation of property rights for which the law furnishes 

 redress. 



So also in the case of deer ordinarily kept in aninclosure.andfed, and 

 from which selections are made for slaughter. The habit of returning 

 is here only imperfectly established. The animals are apt to resume 

 their wild nature; but nevertheless, the economic uses they subserve 

 are sufficient to sustain a property interest in them, inasmuch as they 

 are thus made, to borrow the language employed in relation to them 

 by the English Court of Common Pleas, " as much a sort of husbandry 

 as horses, cows, sheep, or any other cattle." ! 



It is observable that these doctrines relating to property so familiar 

 in the municipal jurisprudence of civilized nations, relating to the sev- 

 eral descriptions of animals above mentioned, have not had their origin 

 in special legislation, but in the unwritten law. They are the fruit of 

 the unconscious action of society manifesting itself in the formation of 

 usages which eventually compel the recognition of law. This means 

 that they have their origin iu natural law which is the basis of all un- 

 written jurisprudence. They are the dictates of universal morality, 

 cultivated, ascertained, and formulated by judicial action through long 

 periods of time. It is this which stamps them with that character of 

 approved, long established and unchangeable truth which makes them 

 binding upon an international forum as being the indubitable voice of 

 natural and universal law. 



The inquiry which has thus been prosecuted into the grounds and 

 reasons upon which the institution of property stands fully substantiates, 

 it is believed, the main proposition with which it began, namely, that 

 where any useful animals so far subject themselves to the control of particu- 

 lar men as to enable them exclusively to cultivate such animals and obtain 

 the annual increase for the supply of human wants, and at the same time 

 to preserve the stoch, they have a property interest in them. And this 

 conclusion, deducible from the broad and general doctrines of the law 

 of nature, is confirmed by the actual fact as exhibited in the usages 

 and laws of all civilized states. Wherever a useful animal exhibits in 

 its nature and habits this quality, it must be denominated and treated 

 as the subject of property, and as well between nations as between 



'Davies v. Powell, "Willes, 4G. 



