POLICE POWER 33 
declare and abate a nuisance, and the common 
council had not so declared the thing sought to be 
abated to be a nuisance.!® The question of nui- 
sance is a fact to be proven. 
21, Changes in Legal Nuisances. Changes in 
surroundings or in science may make that a 
nuisance which before was not so legally. A man 
may have been conducting a livery stable in a 
certain building without creating a nuisance; but 
if an apartment building be erected on the adjoin- 
ing lot, the odors and the noise arising from the 
stable may work such injury to the apartment 
owner that it will be considered a nuisance, and 
ordered abated by removing the horses.?° 
Formerly a manure pile was regarded as a 
nuisance when it was near and large enough so 
that its odor was offensive, or the sight was re- 
pugnant. Practically it might be said that under 
the old idea a manure pile was a nuisance in pro- 
portion to its size, and to the proximity; and if 
it chanced to be a hundred feet away it would 
hardly be deemed a nuisance. Modern scientific 
advances have changed this. The house fly is 
known to be a carrier of infectious diseases from 
one person to another. The fly is a nuisance 
per se. Flies breed in stable manure. So do rats, 
and rats are also nuisances per se. The manure 
pile is therefore regarded as a nuisance because 
flies and rats there breed. Now a fly, when he first 
emerges, may go in a straight flight five or six 
hundred feet, and rats easily travel as far. 
Though the pile may not be seen or its odor de- 
19 Humphrey v. Dunnells, 21 20Qehler v. Levy, 234 Ill. 
Cal. App. 312, 131 Pac. 761. 595, 85 N. E. 271. 
