POLICE POWER 33 



declare and abate a nuisance, and the common 

 council had not so declared the thing sought to be 

 abated to be a nuisance.^ ^ The question of nui- 

 sance is a fact to be proven. 



21. Changes in Legal Nuisances. Changes in 

 surroundings or in science may make that a 

 nuisance which before was not so legally. A man 

 may have been conducting a livery stable in a 

 certain building without creating a nuisance; but 

 if an apartment building be erected on the adjoin- 

 ing lot, the odors and the noise arising from the 

 stable may work such injury to the apartment 

 owner that it will be considered a nuisance, and 

 ordered abated by removing the horses.^^ 



Formerly a manure pile was regarded as a 

 nuisance when it was near and large enough so 

 that its odor was offensive, or the sight was re- 

 pugnant. Practically it might be said that under 

 the old idea a manure pile was a nuisance in pro- 

 portion to its size, and to the proximity; and if 

 it chanced to be a hundred feet away it would 

 hardly be deemed a nuisance. Modern scientific 

 advances have changed this. The house fly is 

 known to be a carrier of infectious diseases from 

 one person to another. The fly is a nuisance 

 per se. Flies breed in stable manure. So do rats, 

 and rats are also nuisances per se. The manure 

 pile is therefore regarded as a nuisance because 

 flies and rats there breed. Now a fly, when he first 

 emerges, may go in a straight flight five or six 

 hundred feet, and rats easily travel as far. 

 Though the pile may not be seen or its odor de- 



19 Humphrey v. Dunnells, 21 20 Oehler v. Levy, 234 111. 



Cal. App. 312, 131 Pac. 761. 595, 85 N. E. 271. 



