18 WILD ANIMALS. 



neither had any authority from the owner of the tree, and 

 both were trespassers upon his rights, or as though there was 

 no individual owner of the tree. How then would the case 

 stand? No principle is better settled than that a person in 

 possession of property can maintain trespass against anyone 

 that interferes with such possession who cannot show a better 

 right or title." «' 



In a Rhode Island case it was held that trover for the value 

 of bees and honey will not lie against a stranger who appro- 

 priated a hive in a box placed by the plaintiff on another's 

 land.** The following comments have been made on this 

 case: "While the rights to animals ferce natures as between 

 the owner of the soil and others have been fairly settled by a 

 considerable series of cases, the relative rights of parties, both 

 of whom acknowledge the superior right of the owner of the 

 soil, seem never to have been precisely described. In a re- 

 cent Rhode Island case . . . the plaintiff without permission 

 placed a hive upon the land of a third person. The defend- 

 ant, also a trespasser, removed the bees and honey which had 

 collected in the hive. The court find no cause of action, 

 holding that neither title nor right to possession is shown 

 either to the bees or to the honey. The discussion, especially 

 in a case where the precise point is clearly new, is unfortu- 

 nately general and largely irrelevant. ... It scarcely need 

 follow {i. e., from Blades v. Higgs, cited in § 6, supra] that a 

 trespasser cannot maintain on the basis of mere possession an 

 action against a later trespasser. There may have been a 

 possible doubt as to plaintiff's having reduced the animals to 

 possession by collecting them in his hive, but in the preced- 

 ing cases that would seem to give him actual physical pos- 

 session enough for this action. About the honey there would 

 seem to be even less doubt; but, strange to say, neither in 

 this case nor elsewhere does the question seem to have been 

 discussed — how far the law about animals fer<^ nature applies 



" Adams v. Burton, 43 Vt. 36. " Rexroth v. Coon, 15 R. I. 35, 



