4 WILD ANIMALS. 



order to divest the qualified owner's title. Therefore we do 

 not see why the rule laid down in this New York case would 

 not apply if a menagerie train were wrecked and such of the 

 animals, no matter how valuable, as were uninjured had es- 

 caped. Large amounts of capital and much industry are now 

 invested in menageries and in tamed animals for various kinds 

 of 'shows,' and such business enterprises are sanctioned by 

 law. It, therefore, seems to us that the universal application 

 of the rule laid down in MuUett v. Bradley might lead to 

 very grave injustice. ... It certainly would seem that Black- 

 stone's rule above quoted should not be extended, but at least 

 very strictly construed." ^ 



2. Character of Confinement — The examples usually cited by 

 the English jurisconsults of animals subject to this kind of 

 qualified property are deer in a park, hares or rabbits in an 

 enclosed warren, doves in a dove-house, pheasants or par- 

 tridges in a mew, hawks that are fed and commanded by their 

 owner, fish in a private pond or in a trunk, swans marked, 

 even if turned loose in a river, or unmarked in a private river 

 or pond, and bees hived and reclaimed. Otherwise of deer, 

 hares and conies in a forest or chase, fish in an open river or 

 pond, or wild fowls at their natural liberty.® ; "Encompassing 

 and securing such animals with nets and toils, or otherwise 

 intercepting them, so as to deprive them of their natural lib- 



' N. Y. Law Jour., quoted in 47 Cent. L. Jour. 439. 



In 58 Alb. L. Jour. 327, it is said: "As has been pointed out by the 

 New York Law Journal, this rule would apply with harshness, if not with 

 positive injustice, to the case of a wreck of a menagerie train and the 

 escape of the wild animals constituting the menagerie. The modern de- 

 velopment of the 'show' business, in which large amounts of capital are 

 invested, would seem to require a more rigid application of the rule as 

 • to what constitutes a return to the normal state of nature of an animal 

 ferce natura." 



'2 Bl. Com. 392; 4 id. 235; I Hale P. C. 510. 



A beast due to the lord of the manor by heriot custom may be seized 

 without the manor, although it has never been within it: Western v. 

 Bailey, [1897] i Q. B. 86. 



