IN SEARCH OF A HORSE. 245 



goods consists in, what amounts to an earnest or part 

 payment, and what will constitute a memorandum 

 made and signed by the parties or their agents. 



The question of delivery is the one which most 

 usually arises in horse-dealing transactions ; and I 

 should define a delivery to be, any act whereby the 

 subsequent power of disposition over the horse is 

 transferred to the purchaser. 



It is clear that a delivery may be either actual or 

 constructive : an actual delivery is a bond fide trans- 

 fer of the property from hand to hand ; as where the 

 purchaser receives the horse by his halter, and^ leads 

 him out of the seller's stable to his own. But con- 

 structive delivery is by no means equally intelli- 

 gible ; the purchaser may have no stable, or it may 

 not be convenient to him to remove the horse at the 

 time when the contract is made ; and in the majority 

 of instances, it is usual to leave the horse till a ser- 

 vant can be sent to fetch it : in such cases the ques- 

 tion arises whether a delivery has actually been 

 made; and several decisions upon the subject are to 

 be found in our Reports : the first to which I shall 

 refer, is the case of Elmore v. Stone, 1 Taunton, 

 458 ; here the seller removed the horses which he 



