SPHERE OF STATE GOVERNMENT 75 



Property ratione soli as interpreted by the English courts 77 

 means no more than the exclusive right to catch or kill 

 animals ferae naturae by reason of ownership of the soil 

 upon which they are found. In England it is a right pos- 

 sessed by every landowner unless his land, as in rare cases, 

 falls in the class to which the hunting rights were granted 

 away by royal franchise in the centuries past. As soon as 

 this right is exercised, the animals so killed become the abso- 

 lute property of the owner of the soil. 



Granting that such exclusive right exists in England, 

 suppose a person enters upon land not his own and killing 

 game reduces it to possession, does he thus acquire absolute 

 property in it notwithstanding the rights of the landowner? 78 

 The English courts answer in the negative, 79 laying down 

 the principle that reduction to possession must not be by 

 means of a wrongful act, for 80 



... it would be unreasonable to hold that the act of the tres- 

 passer, that is of a wrong doer, should divest the owner of the 

 soil of his qualified property in the game and give the wrong 

 doer an absolute right of property to the exclusion of the right- 

 ful owner. But in game, when killed and taken, there is abso- 

 lute property in some one, and therefore the property in game 

 found and taken by a trespasser on the land of A must vest 

 either in A, or the trespasser, and if it is unreasonable to hold 

 that the property vests in the trespasser, it must of necessity 

 be vested in A, the owner of the soil. 



Whether in the United States the landowner similarly 

 has qualified property in animals ferae naturae valid not 



77 Blades v. Higgs, op. cit., p. 1478. 



78 See interesting discussion on subject in Justice of the Peace, vol. 26, 

 p. 467 (1862). 



79 Note that this rule differs from the Roman law under which re- 

 duction to possession gives absolute property no matter where it takes 

 place. Justinian, Inst. Lib. 2, C. i, sec. 12. 



80 Blades v. Higgs, op. cit., p. 1479. 



