WILD AND DANGEROUS ANIMALS. 377 



property of the company until the completion of the work, 

 when such as had not been used should be delivered to the 

 contractor, but in other clauses the words "team and horses" 

 were used as well as the word "plant," it was held that horses 

 were not included in "plant" and that expert evidence was 

 not admissible to explain the meaning of the word.^^ And 

 cab-horses were held not to be "plant" within the meaning of 

 the Bills of Sale Amendment Act 1882, providing that the 

 act should not a render a bill of sale void as to "any fixtures 

 separately assigned or charged and any plant or trade ma- 

 chinery." "It is plain that the word 'plant' was intended to 

 refer to things more or less similar in kind to trade fixtures 

 or trade machinery." In the Court of Appeal it was held 

 that cab-horses could not be said to be "used in, attached to 

 or brought upon" the premises, even if "plant" might some- 

 times include living animals. Chitty, L. J., said: "A horse 

 that turns a mill for grinding chalk , or the like might, 

 I think, be plant within the sub-section. But that case 

 would be quite different from the present, for there, the horse 

 would be used in the factory or other place where the mill 

 was." 1* 



To return to the subject of the present section, Justice 

 Cooley in his work on Torts thus speaks of the liability of 

 the owners of animals ferce nature: "Lord Hale says in re- 

 spect to injuries by beasts that 'these things seem to be 

 agreeable to law: i. If the owner have notice of the quality 

 of his beast and it doth anybody hurt, he is chargeable with 

 an action for it. 2. Though he have no particular notice 

 that he did any such thing before, yet if it be a beast that 

 is ferce natures as a lion, a bear, a wolf, yea, an ape or a mon- 

 key, if he get loose and do harm to any person, the owner 

 is liable to an action for the damage, and so I knew it ad- 

 judged in Andrew Baker's case, whose child was bit by a 



" Middleton v. Flanagan, 25 Ont. 417. 



" London and East. Counties L. & D. Co. v. Creasey, [1897] 1 Q- B. 

 442; affirmed in Ibid. 768. 



