PROPERTY IN GAME. 11 



hunts it into the ground of C. and there kills it, the property 

 remains all the while in B., the proprietor of the warren, be- 

 cause the privilege continues." So in the later case of Blades 

 V. Higgs*** it was held that game chased and killed on A.'s 

 land is his property, and his servants are justified in taking it 

 away from the trespasser, on the ground that title to property 

 created merely by the act of reducing it into possession neces- 

 sarily implies that this reduction is effected by an act not in 

 any way of a wrongful nature, and that such an act effected by 

 one who is at the moment a trespasser is not sufficient. Lord 

 Holt's proposition that if A. starts a hare in the ground of B. 

 and hunts it into the ground of C. and kills it there, the prop- 

 erty is in A., was thus commented on by Lord Chelmsford : 

 "It would appear to me to be more in accordance with prin- 

 ciple to hold that if the trespasser deprived the owner of the 

 land where the game was started of his right to claim the 

 property by unlawfully killing it on the land of another to 

 which he had driven it, he converted it into a subject of prop- 

 erty for that other owner and not for himself." 



It was also held in Churchward v. Studdy*^ that where the 

 plaintiff's dogs hunted and caught on the defendant's land a 

 hare started on the land of a third person, the property was 

 thereby vested in the plaintiff, who may maintain trespass 

 against the defendant for afterwards taking the hare away; 

 and so it would be though the hare being quite spent had been 

 caught up by a laborer of the defendant's for the benefit of 

 the hunters. In a carefully considered article*^ the writer 

 took issue with a dictum in Reg. v. Roe,*^ where it was held 

 that an indictment charging a prisoner with stealing "one 

 dead partridge," was not sustained by proof that the partridge 

 was wounded but was picked up while alive, though in a dying 

 state. Willes, J., said : "I wish to state for myself that I am 

 not satisfied that if the partridge had been dead when picked 

 up by the prisoner it would have been sufficiently reduced 



" II H. L. Cas. 621. " 14 East 249. " 46 J. P. 3. 

 " II Cox C. C. 554. 



