EIGHT TO SIKK WELLS. 177 



only to the flow of the water, and the enjoyment of it, subject to tlie 

 simihar rights of all- the proprietors of the banks on each side to the 

 reasonable enjoyment of the same gift of Providence." 



The riijlit of siiikbuj a well, and thcrehj interfering with the suhfer- 

 ranean supj)Ii/ to a stream, was much considered in Chascmore v. 

 Richards, which decided that the owner of a mill on the banks of 

 a river cannot maintain an action against a landowner who sinks a 

 deep well in his own land, and by pumps and steam engine diverts 

 the underground water, which would otherwise have percolated 

 through the soil, and flowed into the river, by which for upwards 

 of sixty years the mill was worked. The i)laintiff had a mill, and 

 was entitled to the flow of the stream of the river Wandle. For 

 more than sixty years before the acts complained of, the defendant 

 had not abstracted any of the water from the stream itself, but con- 

 siderable abstraction had taken place from one of the sources of 

 supply to the stream. A large quantity of rain falling in a district 

 of many thousand acres, sank into the upper ground, and then flowed 

 and percolated through the strata to the Wandle, sometimes rising to 

 the surface in springs, and flowing as surface streams into the river ; 

 in other instanees finding their whole way underground into the river 

 by drains and courses, so as to supply the river above the mill. The 

 defendant, who could not reasonably foresee the precise eSect, sunk a 

 74 feet well on a piece of land, of his own, in the district, a quarter of a 

 mile from the commencement of the river, intercepted a portion of the 

 water, and supplied 500,000 gallons to Croydon daily. Part of this 

 water was flowing, and finding its way underground through the strata 

 towards the river, and but for its being so intercepted would have 

 reached the river above the plaintiff's mill, and in sufficient quantities 

 to have been of sensible value in and towards the working of it. 



The Exchequer Chamber held {Coleridge J. diss.) that no action was 

 maintainable. Cresswell J. in his judgment examined and commented 

 on Diclcinson v. Grand Junction Canal Company. His lordship ob- 

 served: " The oivner of a mill on afloiving stream is in the same j)osition 

 as a riparian projyrietor ; he can have no larger right than that which 

 he has by nature against those above or below him, unless it has been 

 acquired by adverse user. A party, whether mill-owner or riparian 

 owner, suing for abstraction of water, must establish a right either 

 fii/re naturcB or by user, and in the latter case the user must be such 

 as to establish a servitude affecting the land through which the water 

 flows. Every riparian owner is by nature subject to the natural 

 rights of those lower down, which are in the nature of a servitude 

 imposed on the land — a servitude 7ie facias. Can, then, this servi- 



