INJURY FROM OTHER CAUSES. 243 



sufficient height were erected around a statue near a market, 

 and the plaintiff's cow was killed while trying to jump them, 

 it was held that the owners of the market were bound to keep 

 the market-place free from danger to those frequenting it, 

 and that they had here'been guilty of a misfeasance.^^® 



Where an open and well-beaten path led from the travelled 

 part of the road to an apparently safe watering-place, which 

 was really a deep and miry pit filled with water, and the plain- 

 tiff's horse, having been turned in to drink, fell in and was 

 drowned, it was held that, as the indications of danger were 

 concealed, the town was Hable. "Towns are not obliged to 

 provide watering places for the public convenience, but, when 

 they are provided by nature in the highway, they ought not 

 to be suffered to become pitfalls first to allure and then to de- 

 stroy horses or other animals turned aside to partake the re- 

 freshment to which they are thus invited." ^^® 



Where a team became mired in a highway and, in the effort 

 to get out, one of the horses burst a blood-vessel and died 

 soon afterwards, the injury was held to be the direct and im- 

 mediate consequence of the defect in the road.^^° But where 

 the miry condition of a road is due solely to the weather and 

 to the nature of the soil, the township is not liable therefor.^^^ 

 Nor is it hable where its neglect is not the proximate cause 

 of the injury as where water rose over a highway and ice 

 formed, causing the slipping and drowning of a horse at a 

 point where there was a hole three and a half feet deep.^^^ 



Where horses are drowned crossing on a highway a stream 

 swollen by a flood, the test of the town's liability is whether 

 the freshet was unusual and extraordinary, and not whether 

 it was unprecedented and not reasonably to be expected by 



"' Lax V. Darlington, S Ex. D. 28. 



■" Cobb V. Standish, 14 Me. 198. As to notice of injuries in Maine, see 

 Lord V. Saco, 87 id. 231. 

 '^° Davis V. Longmeadow, 169 Mass. SSi- 

 ''' Brendlinger v. New Hanover Tp., 148 Pa. St. 93. 

 "' Smith V. Walker Tp. (Mich.), 75 N. W. Rep. 141. 



