PROPERTY IN RABBITS. 379 



instead of redressing it ; and on these grounds, our judgment is for the 

 defendants " {Blades v. Higgs and Another, 34 L. J. (N. S.) C. P. 286). 



The decision of the Court of Common Pleas and Exchequer Chamber 

 was upheld by the House of Lords. 



Rdhhits the propertg of the person on tvhose lands they are started and 

 killed. — If rabbits be started and killed on the land of another, they are 

 the property of the person on whose land they are killed, but the Court 

 were not prepared to decide whether there would be any distinction if 

 the rabbits were driven off the land of one person on to another ; and 

 per Willes J. : " It is impossible to get over the case of Lord Lonsdale 

 V. Eigg (1 H. & N. 923, and 26 L. J. (N. S.) Ex. 196). It will be well 

 when this case is further considered, if it should ever be so, to compare 

 the dictum of Lord ffoU in Sutton v. Moodg, with the passage in the 

 Institutes of Justinian, where it is laid down that wild animals : 

 * Simul atque ab aliquo capta fuerint jure gentium statum illius esse 

 incipiunt quod enim ante nullius est, id naturali ratione occupanti con- 

 ceditur. Nee interest feras, bestias et volucres utrum in suo fundo 

 quisque capiat an in alieno.' The same rule has been adopted in all 

 countries professedly governed by the Roman civil law." Here the 

 defendants, servants of the Marquis of Exeter, claimed the bags with 

 rabbits in them out of the luggage-van, and emptying out the rabbits 

 returned the bags {Blades v. Iliggs and Another). This decision was 

 affirmed in the Exchequer Chamber, on the ground that Lord Lonsdale 

 V. Eigg had settled the question. 



Eeg. V. Paul Eead. This was a case stated by the Vice-Chairman of 

 the Berkshire Quarter Sessions. The prisoner was indicted at the Berks 

 Epiphany Sessions, December 31, 1877, for stealing 18 rabbits the pro- 

 perty of Mr. Smith, his master. The evidence showed that the prisoner 

 was the gamekeeper of Smith, and Was employed to look after a wood in 

 which the game and rabbits and rights of sporting had been granted to 

 Smith by the owner. The prisoner was not at liberty to take or kill 

 rabbits in the wood for his own use, but he took and killed and removed 

 18 wild rabbits from the wood, and had bargained to sell them when 

 they were seized in the possession of the purchaser's agent, the capture, 

 killing, removing, and selling being part of one continuous act. The 

 counsel for the prisoner asked the Court to stop the case because there 

 was not any evidence to go to the jury that the rabbits had ever as sub- 

 jects of larceny been in the possession of Smith, and that, therefore, the 

 prisoner could not be guilty of stealing or embezzling them. The counsel 

 for the prosecution insisted that when the rabbits were captured and 

 killed by the prisoner, they were by that act reduced into the possession 

 of his master and became subjects of larceny or embezzlement. The 



