Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 07.pdf/210

A Legal Aviary. sounding throat " : to him " the trumpets of A chicken doesn't ask who his father is. the day " were as distasteful as Marcellus Yet it is clear that only the hen that laid the deemed them to be to sprites and fairies, dire egg could have been mother to that father, witches or baneful planets. The counsel and hence to the chick." The discussion in for the defence eulogized the place in history this case arose as follows. Farmer A had occupied by the rooster from the days of the some fine chickens, and seeing one like his Greeks and Romans to the present hour, — in B's yard claimed that it must have come it was the most useful of domesticated fowls from an egg which one of his hens had — it was the " roi de la basse cour," and its chanced to have dropped on B's premises, crowing was pleasant to hear. A citizen, he and so must be his, A's. Another, learned held, had a right to play the piano, or sing, in the law, said, " It is merely a question, when he pleased; who then could interfere not between hen and hen, but between with another citizen, who took pleasure in farmer and farmer. The law is clear, and hearing his rooster sound his clarion shrill? the maxim ' that he who does a thing through Judge Wurtele, in charging the jury, cited another does it himself ' applies. Therefore the case of a Dutch ambassador in London farmer A, through his duly authorized hen, who had been brought before the magis laid the egg on B's premises. . . . The trate on a similar complaint : he pleaded the egg being there, farmer B came, and by his want of jurisdiction of the English court to duly authorized agent, his sitting hen, try him, and so escaped; but only for a hatched out the egg, whence the chicken in time, as Her Majesty of Holland, when she dispute. Now there was nothing which heard of it, ordered him to do away with compelled farmer B, through his hen, to his roosters. That case was an authority. hatch out that egg. Having chosen to do His Honor held that the rights of one man so he must be held to the consequences, were limited by those of others, that there and I think he is clearly chargeable with was a place for everything, that the country notice (in the eyes of the law) that he, and not the crowded city was the proper farmer B, had not, through his hen, laid that place to keep fowls. The jury's verdict was, egg, and that therefore it was an egg laid by Guilty. The fine, as the obnoxious owners some other farmer. This being so, the law of the strident voices had already been taken is clear. Farmer A is entitled to the egg out of the city, was five dollars or eight which he, as aforesaid, laid, and its proceeds days in jail. ("Montreal Daily Star," Oct. and natural increase; at most farmer B is 15, 1894.) entitled to a mechanic's lien for work, labor, In legal circles it is not quite clear which and services in hatching out the egg. (42 hen is the mother of the chick, the one that Alb. L. J. 242.) lays the egg or the one which hatches it. The Welsh in their early days paid con Judge McAdam, of New York, appears to siderable attention to poultry. In the laws have decided in favor of the sitting hen. supposed to have been enacted by Howel Counsel cited by our esteemed contemporary, the Good (who died A.D. 948), we have the " Albany Law Journal," differ from the the worth of fowls thus given : " A hen is learned Judge. One says, " Hatching is a one penny in value. A cock is two hens in mechanical process and not at all charac value. Each chicken is a sheaf of oats, or a teristic of motherhood. Indeed science has farthing, in value, until it shall roost; after demonstrated that it is not the hen at all that a half-penny, until it shall lay, or until which hatches, but heat; so that the sitting it shall crow, is its value; and after that its hen is simply a natural radiator. There can value is a legal penny." A goose and a not be a mother without there being a father. gander were equal in value, in North Wales,