20 



JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



THE AMATEUR AND HORTICULTURAL LAW. 

 By H. Morgan Veitch, Solicitor. 



[Lecture fjiven 0 n April 30, 1907.1 



In considering the rules of Horticultural Law as they affect our present 

 subject it is necessary to bear in mind that a very wide distinction has to 

 be drawn between the rights of the amateur and the professional grower. 

 One has to remember that practically none of the Acts of Parliament in 

 force for the benefit of agriculture or market-gardening have anything to 

 do with the amateur gardener. For present purposes these must be 

 entirely dismissed from our minds, and it is equally necessary to follow 

 the same rule with regard to the judicial decisions which we find in the 

 Law Reports. But having got so far, there are still other considerations 

 to be borne in mind if one is to avoid being hopelessly confused by reports 

 of cases which at first sight appear to contradict each other. Many 

 reported decisions with regard to trees (either timber trees or those of 

 smaller growth, such as fruit trees) go back to a very early period of legal 

 history, and one has to remember the varying conditions of land tenure 

 -which were in force at that time. For instance, in the case of land held 

 under what is called copyhold tenure (that is to say, land held by the 

 tenant from the lord of the manor) the copyhold tenant had various 

 rights and duties, which varied according to the custom in different 

 localities. These local customs, though in many instances still surviving, 

 do not necessarily represent the general law of the land relating to free- 

 hold property let on lease, and, as many legal authors have not sufficiently 

 emphasised this distinction, considerable confusion has sometimes been 

 created in the mind of the casual reader. 



Again, it is necessary to recollect that many reported judgments deal 

 only with the question of what a tenant may or may not do in the case of 

 " settled land " —that is to say, land which under the trusts of a will or 

 settlement is given to one person for life, and on the death of that person 

 goes to someone else called the reversioner. Disputes with regard to the 

 right to cut either timber or seasonable wood or underwood often arise 

 between the person who is enjoying the property during his life and the 

 person who expects to come into that property when the tenant for life 

 dies. The tenant for life naturally wishes to get as much profit as 

 possible out of the property during his own lifetime, whereas the person 

 entitled in reversion is equally anxious that the tenant for life should take 

 away as little as possible, so as to leave all the more for him when he 

 comes into his inheritance. In these disputes the main point very often 

 turns upon whether or not the tenant is what is called " impeachable for 

 waste," and it would be highly misleading if one were to assume that the 

 rights, which in these cases the Court declares to belong to a tenant for 

 life, are necessarily the same rights as those which belong to a tenant who 

 is merely holding under a lease for a term of years. Finally, in the case 



