THE COMMON-LAW RULE RESTRAINING ANIMALS. 259 



filled his duty with reference to such fence ; otherwise he could 

 not recover.^ The reason for such a rule in a populous and 

 highly cultivated country is obvious; every encouragement 

 ought to be given to the promotion of agriculture and the 

 welfare of the classes concerned therein, and it is negligence 

 for the owner of animals to allow them to run at large and 

 trespass on the lands of others when there is only a limited 

 amount of territory available for pasture, within which it is 

 perfectly easy to confine and tend them. This rule has been 

 declared to be the law or adopted by statute in many of the 

 States, especially the more populous ones. 



In Georgia the common-law rule was^ formerly not in 

 force ;^ it is otherwise now, however, except in the counties 

 where the stock law does not obtain.* 



In Illinois it was held in an early case that the common law 

 was not in force, and the reasons given are quoted as applica- 

 ble to other new communities. The court said : "However 

 well adapted the rule of the common law may be to a densely 

 populated country like England, it is surely but ill adapted 

 to a new country like ours. If this common-law rule prevails 

 now, it must have prevailed from the time of the earliest set- 

 tlements in the State, and can it be supposed that when the 

 early settlers of this country located upon the borders of our 

 extensive prairies they brought with them and adopted as 

 applicable to their condition a rule of law requiring each one 

 to fence up his cattle ; that they designed the millions of fer- 

 tile acres stretched out before them to go ungrazed, except 

 as each purchaser from government was able to enclose his 

 part with a fence? This State is unlike any other of the 

 Eastern States in their early settlement, because, from the 

 scarcity of timber, it must be many years yet before our ex- 



' Ibid. 398; Pollock Torts, 2d ed., 433. 



"Macon & W. R. Co. v. Lester, 30 Ga. 911; Georgia R. & Bkg. Co. 

 V. Neely, 56 id. 540. 



* Bonner v. De Loach, 78 Ga. 50. See Newton v. Ferrill (Ga.), 25 S. E. 

 Rep. 422. 



