50 INTERESTS IN LAND. SALE OF HOPS. 



CHAPTER IT. 



INTERESTS IN LAND. 



T7here anything is done which substantially amonnts to a sale or 

 parting with an interest in land, the contract is for or relating to the 

 sale of an interest in or concerning lands, tenements, or hereditaments, 

 within the meaning of the 29 Car. II. c. 3, s. 4. 



The case of Waddt/i//fon v. Brisiowe, where a written agreement was 

 made in November, 1799, for all the hops which should be grown in the 

 ensuing year, upon a given number of acres of land, was long regarded 

 as a leading one on the subject of root crops, conferring an interest in 

 land. The hops which were the subject of the contract were not then in 

 existence ; there was nothing but the root of the plant (from which the 

 bine which was to flower and produce the hop, w^ould shoot out in the 

 following sj)ring), and the purchaser was not to have that. However, 

 after the lapse of a quarter of a century, Mr. Justice Bayley, when 

 delivering judgment in Evans v. Roherts, passed it, among several 

 others of the same class, under review, and showed that it could not 

 be said to have been decided on that ground at all. " The question in 

 that case," said his lordship, " was not whether the agreement, which 

 was in writing, was for an interest in land, but whether it ought to 

 have been stamped. It was contended that it was within the exception 

 in 23 Geo. III. c. 58, s. 4, an agreement made for and relating to the 

 Bale of goods, wares, and merchandise. All the judges concm-red in the 

 judgment that the contract in that case was not such an agreement ; 

 but Charnbre J. was the only judge who intimated an opinion that the 

 contract gave the vendee an interest in land. He certainly stated that 

 tiic contract gave the vendee an interest in the produce of the whole of 

 that part of the vendor's fiirm whicli consisted of hop grounds." Hence 

 the case hardly deserved to be quoted by Lord Mansfield C.J., as a 

 precedent strictly in point in Emmerson v. Heelis, where the Court of 

 Common Pleas decided that a sale of growing turnips by public auction 

 no time being stipulated for their removal, and the degree of their 

 maturity not being positively found, was a sale of an interest in land 

 withm 29 Car. 11. c. 3, s. 4, and must be in writing, " because we do 



