IRRIGATION BY USE OF ARTIFICIAL DAM. 191 



from east to west, and the four closes were situated on the banks of this 

 stream. There was no other stream on the surface, but certain wells 

 were in existence in tliose closes, and others were subsequently found. 

 It was held by the Court of Exchequer that the wells and all water in 

 the four closes passed by the grant in question to Woodcock, and that 

 neither Lord Derby nor his lessees could work the mines so as to cut 

 off the springs in the closes in question. And j;«- Martin B. : " Lord 

 Derby granted to Woodcock all the water which might be found on the 

 closes in question. Lord Derby cannot derogate from his grant, and 

 the defendant, his lessee, is in the same position. Nortliam v. Hurley 

 decided for the first time, what appears to me to be clear, viz., that if, 

 u]3on a question of water rights, tliere is an agreement by deed, such 

 deed will regulate the rights of the parties" {Ih.). 



Greenslade v. HalUdcuj was one of the earliest cases on irrigation. 

 The plaintiff owned certain ancient meadow land near a small stream 

 which flowed through defendant's land. For fifty years the tenants of 

 the plaintiff and their i:)redecessors had been accustomed to enter on 

 the defendant's land, and pen back the water of this stream by placino- 

 a row of loose stones across it at a certain point ; and when the water 

 was so penned back by this dam or obstruction, a portion of it ran 

 through a small archway along an artificial cut, which passed to some 

 distance over the defendant's laud, and so irrigated the plaintiff's 

 meadow. In dry weather the tenants, according to the plaintiff's wit- 

 nesses, placed a board or fender across the stream, but neither was 

 permanently fixed till the year before the action, when the plaintiff's 

 tenant placed a board in front of the stones, and fastened it down by 

 two stakes driven into the bed of the stream, on the top of which stakes 

 were crooks embracing the upper edge of the board. Whether this 

 board penned the water higher than the ordinary dam of loose stones, 

 or whether a board had ever been used before, except at a very remote 

 period when the water meadow was in the possession of the defendant's 

 predecessors, did not satisfactorily appear from the evidence. TJie 

 defendant, however, conceived that the permanency of the dam mioht 

 establish for the plaintiff a right to a greater extent than he had enjoyed 

 before, and be prejudicial to her own enjoyment of a mill above and 

 water meadows below the dam, and caused the stakes to be pulled up 

 and the board to be removed ; saying to the tenant, at the same time, 

 that until it was proved what quantity of water ought to go, he should 

 exercise no right there. 



At the trial, Taunton J. seemed to think that the defendant had 

 denied the plaintiff's right in toto, and excluded this declaration as not 

 being admissible evidence. But he told the jury that if the board 



