The Agricultural Holdings (^England) Act, 1875. 
131 
tion. It is true that the leaning of the law was far more strongly 
pronounced in favour of ownership. Following in this respect 
the Roman law, our early English commentators laid down the 
doctrine not only that buildings passed with the soil, but that, 
if trees were planted or seed sown in another's land, the pro- 
prietor of the soil became proprietor also of the tree, the plant, 
or the seed, as soon as it had taken root. Quicquid plantatur 
solo, solo cedit — whatever is affixed to soil becomes, in contempla- 
tion of law, a part of the soil, and subject to the same rights of 
property as the soil itself. When farmers were little more than 
bailiffs or stewards, paying a rent in kind, this general doctrine 
was not so harsh and unjust as it now seems to us under the 
highly artificial conditions of modern agricultural tenancies. The 
maxim, however, was in time tempered in favour of the tenant, as 
well from a sense of justice as for reasons of public policy. " If 
the tenant-at-will sows his land," says Blackstone, " and the 
landlord, before the corn is ripe or before it is reaped, puts him 
out, yet the tenant shall have the emblements, and free ingress, 
egress, and regress, to cut and carry away the profits. And this 
for the same reason upon which all the cases of emblements turn, 
viz., the point of uncertainty ; since the tenant could not possibly 
know when his landlord would determine his holding, and there- 
fore could make no provision against it ; and having sown the 
land, which is for the good of the public, upon a reasonable 
presumption, the law will not suffer him to be a loser by it." 
And again : " The tenant . . . shall have the emblements to 
compensate for the labour and expense of tilling, manuring, and 
sowing the lands, and also for the encouragement of husbandry, 
which, being a public benefit, tending to the increase and plenty 
of provisions, ought to have the utmost security and privilege 
that the law can give it. Wherefore, by feudal law, if the tenant 
for life died between the beginning of September and the end of 
February, the lord who was entitled to the reversion was, also 
entitled to the profits of the whole year ; but if he died between 
the beginning of March and the end of August, the heirs of the 
tenant received the whole. And from hence our law of emble- 
ments seems to have been derived." 
The doctrine of emblements,* as Blackstone elsewhere ex- 
plains, extended only to corn sown, roots planted, or' other 
* Emblements (sometimes called fructus industriales) is derived from the old 
French term eniblavence de hie, corn sprung up above ground, and the word 
strictly means growing crops of sown land, but was enlarged to mean roots planted, 
and other annual artificial profits derived from the soil. The importance of the 
old doctrine has been shorn by 14 & 15 Vict. c. 25, which recites " the evils of 
the right to emblements," and provides (§ 1) that, instead of this right, tenants in 
certain cases, where their leases or tenancies are determined by the death of the 
limited owner, shall continue to occupy their holdings till the end of the current 
vcar of their respective tenancies. 
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