FLOATING AND RAFTING 411 
also in many parts of the Appalachian ref>;ion. Brands are in 
extensive use on tlie Pacific Coast where logs are transported 
by water, but are seldom used in the interior. 
When registered' with some designated state or county official 
(the Surveyor-general' in Minnesota, in most other states the 
County Clerk of the county in which the head office is located) 
brands constitute trademarks of the individuals or firms regis- 
tering them, and their rights to the timber so marked are fully 
protected by law. 
The obliteration or removal of brands or bark marks (''de- 
horning") is regarded as a felony in most states. The highest 
courts of some states- have held where logs are presumptively 
marked according to law and are floated down a stream and the 
owners annually endeavored to recover those that sank and 
became imbedded in the stream, that such logs cannot be re- 
garded as lost or abandoned property whether the marks are dis- 
tinguishable or not. 
Loggers, therefore, do not lose their property rights in lost 
logs if originally they were properly marked by the owner, and 
he used due diligence each year to recover them. On the other 
hand, according to the Supreme Court of Minnesota,^ logs in 
water are abandoned when not in the possession of or under the 
control of any person, and which have no distinctive mark or 
marks on them that have been recorded with the proper officials. 
Such logs are the property of the person who collects them and 
causes them to be marked. These logs are known as "prize" 
logs and on union drives they are divided in rotation, as they pass 
the assorting gap, among the loggers having timber in the stream. 
When the drive is conducted by a boom company all prize logs 
^ "Failure of owner to comply with Compiled Laws, section 5083, providing 
for the recording of log marks, was only effective to deprive the owner of the 
statutory presumption of o^vnership of logs unmarked with the recorded mark, 
and did not deprive him of his property in logs, the title to which he might 
establish by other means, including an unrecorded mark used by him." 
Whitman vs. Muskegon Log Lifting and Operating Co. Supreme Court 
of Michigan, 116 Northwestern 614. 
2 See Whitman vs. Muskegon Log Lifting and Operating Co. Supreme 
Court of Michigan, 116 Northwestern 614. 
^ See Astell vs. McCuish, Supreme Court of Minnesota, 124 Northwestern 
Reporter, 458. 
