Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 5.djvu/420

404 HAR VARD LA W RE VIE W. continue in the school. Then, too, it has already been decided to admit to the school after next year only graduates of colleges and such non-graduates as pass the examination for admission ; and the require- ments of the latter are to be materially increased. This measure, however, it will be noticed, does not go into operation for a year, so that its immediate effect will probably be to increase rather than diminish the number of students coming to the school. With refer- ence to the coming year, therefore, some further plan needs to be worked out, and that without delay. Animals Fer;e Naturae — No Rights gained by Trespasser. — While the rights to animals ferce naturce as between the owner of the soil and others have been fairly settled by a considerable series of cases, t^e idative rights of parties both of whom acknowledge the superior right of the owner of the soil seem never to have been precisely de- scribed. In a recent Rhode Island case 1 the plaintiff, without permis- sion, placed a hive upon the land of a third person. The d"fendant, also a trespasser, removed the bees and honey which had collected in the hive. The court find no cause of action, holding that neither title nor right to possession, is shown either to tiie bees or to the honey. The discussion, especially in a case where the precise point is clearly new, is unfortunately general and largely irrelevant. Most of it is given up to showing, on the basis of Blades v. Higgs? that the right of the owner of the soil, uncertain as it is, cannot be terminated by the act of a trepasser, as no title to such animals can be gained except by a legal act. While this is undoubted law, it scarcely need follow that a tres- passer cannot maintain, on the basis of mere possession, an action against a later trespasser. There may have been a possible doubt as to the plaintiff's having reduced the animals to possession by collecti»g them in his hive, but in the preceding cases that would seem to give him actual physical possession, enough for this action. About the honey there would seem to be even less doubt ; but, strange to say, neither in this case nor elsewhere does the question seem to have been discussed, how far the law about animals ferce naturce applies to their produce, as eggs or honey. The reason on which the law about the animals is founded is wholly inapplicable to the honey, but this case tacitly assumes that no distinction is to be drawn. The judge gaily cites all the cases he can find on the subject, but the only one near enough to draw an analogy from seems to favor the de- fendant's contention. There both parties were on the land without permission, though with the knowledge of the owner, who made ro ob- jection. The defendant interfered after the plaintiff had begun to cut the tree, and the plaintiff recovered in trespass. A dictum is in r oint : "... these parties stood, as between themselves, and as respects the legal principles applicable to the case, in precisely the same position as though neither had any authority from the owner of the tree, and both were trespassers upon his ngucb." TTie law of the bee-trade thus seems, slight as it is, to be in a state even more unsatisfactory than the general law as to the relative rights of trespassers. 8 1 Rexworth v. Com., 23 Atl. Rep. 37. 8 n II. L. Chs 621. 8 Adams v. Burton, 31 Vermont, 36.