Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 8.djvu/188

172 HARVARD LAW REVTEW. ' are striving to comprehend the innumerable, prankish ramblings of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and to straighten out the property rights which have been thrown into dire confusion. Sometimes, it is an inland town which the " Father of Waters " has, by some unexpected twist, con- verted into a river port ; or, again, some riparian city of prominence that it has landed high and dry, a couple of miles or so from the present channel. xGill. Lydick, 59 N. W. R, 104, and Bouvierv. Stricklett, 59 N, W. R. 550, the Missouri has by some of its land-jumping freaks elicited two excellent decisions from the Nebraska court, declarative of the tjest law on the subject. The first of these treats as unworthy of con- sideration that ancient and indefensible doctrine, which strives to dis- tinguish between land left by alluvion and that left by reliction, and decides that in imperceptible increases or decreases, alike, the riparian owner either receives the profit or bears the loss, irrespective of the means by which the river had accomplished these transformations. The opposite phase of the doctrine, namely, the affecting of rights by sudden and perceptible changes in the river's course, is dealt with in the second case. There the stream, the middle of which formed the boundary of several estates, had suddenly abandoned its old channel and had made a new course for itself by cutting across a neck or bend. On these fact^, the court held that the boundary lines bhould remain as before, in the middle of the former bed. LuMLEY V. Wagner denied. — The case of Lumlcy v. Wafrner, i De G. M. & G. 604, excited much comment at the time of its decision, and in the line of English cases to which it has given rise there is evidenre of a desire not to go in any wiy beyond it, Montague v. F!octoii, L R. :6 Equity 189, where an actor, defendant, was in effect restrained from doing anything at all but act for the plaintiff, being overruled at the first opportunity in Whitwood Chem.Co. v.Hardman, L. R. [189132 Ch. 416. Such injunctions as that in Lumley v. Wagner have been grant d in New York on more than one occasion, where the same desire to limit the effect of the rule has not been apparent. One is interested, tin re- fore to find Mr. Justice O. W. Holmes denying the rule entirely ii ihe reeent case of Rice v. D' Arville (Mass. Suffolk Equity Session, S ptem- ber 29, 1894). "It is agreed on all hands, " he says, " that a court of equity will no* attempt to compel a singer to perform a contract to sing. ... If this is ^o, as is admitted, it appears to me, with all respect to judges who may have taken a different view, that there is no sufficient justification for saying to an artist that although I will not put him in piison if he refuses to keep his contract, I will prevent him from earning liis living otherwise, as a more indirect means of compelling him to do the same thing. I do not quite see why, if an equitable remedy is to be given for the purp >se of making an artist keep his contract, the usual renitdy should nut be given, and the whole of it; why, if I say, 'If you do not sing for the plaintiff you shall not sing elsewhere. ' I should not say, ' If you do not sing for the plaintiff you shall go to prison. ' I think the later P^nglish judges are quite alive to the force of these considerations, and simp'y bow to the authority of Lumley v. Wagner^ which, of course, does not bind me. " Mr. Justice Holmes dwells a moment on the reason for refusal to say,