GA ME LAWS ABROAD. 307 



7. The commune is bound either to let the game without 

 subdivision, or to exercise its right of pursuing it by means 

 of trained gamekeepers. 



8. The annual rent of the game thus ceded to the com- 

 mune is, at the close of each year's agreement, to be divided 

 amongst the proprietors, according to the extent of their 

 property in the commune. 



BAVAEIA. 



As regards the question of property in game (or more 

 properly, in wild animals generally), the law of Bavaria 

 recognizes no property in it, so long as it remains in its 

 wild and natural state. Whilst in that condition it is neither 

 the property of the State nor of individuals, but, as under 

 the old Roman law, is held to be a res nullius ; and it only 

 becomes property after it has been reduced into possession, 

 or acquired by legal means. 



Down to the year 1848, the question of the right to kill 

 game remained in Bavaria, as in most of the other German 

 States, in very much the same condition as that which it 

 had assumed three centuries previously. 



The leading provisions of the law (of March 30, 1850) are 

 to the following effect : 



It lays down the general principle that from and after 

 the passing of this law the right to pursue or kill game shall 

 be founded exclusively on the right of proprietorship in the 

 land ; that all previously existing seigniorial rights of the 

 chase on land, the property of other persons, shall cease 

 at once and for ever, and that no such rights shall ever 

 again be created. 



The general principle enunciated by the law as above 

 stated, that the ownership of the land should, in future, 

 constitute the foundation of the right to pursue or kill the 

 game found upon it, is, however, at the same time, prac- 

 tically restricted, to a very notable extent, by the following 



