286 RANDOM THOUGHTS OX HUNTING. 



grace ! The " ferae naturae " are, in their code, the 

 property of him who can take them irrespective 

 of any conflicting right in the owner of the soil. 

 In the sections of country well stocked with game 

 where, consequently, the temptation to hold such 

 opinions is the strongest the feeling on this head 

 is so decided, that some overseers refuse to accept a 

 place (otherwise desirable) if they are restricted in 

 the right to hunt. The writer of these pages, find- 

 ing that during his absence from his property, his 

 game had been destroyed, and his interests, in 

 other respects, sacrificed to this propensity of his 

 overseer insisted, at some cost to his popularity, 

 on inserting a clause to his annual contract, absolute- 

 ly restricting him in this respect. And what was 

 the result ? that having made his own grounds, by 

 this restriction, a preserve, they were only the 

 more harassed, on this account, by the unrestricted 

 in the neighborhood who took a malicious plea- 

 sure in destroying the game which a proprietor had 

 presumed to keep for himself. 



Though it is the broad common law maxim, " that 

 everything upon a man's land is his own usque 

 ad cesium" and he can thus shut it out from his 

 neighbor without wrong to him yet custom, with 

 us, fortified by certain decisions of our courts, has 

 gone far to qualify and set limitations to the maxim. 



