form whereon it stood, making an aperture sufficient for his escape. Then he was off. There was quick but bootless pursuit by the attendants, in pack with many others, with hue and cry. Though often spied in the secrecies between the roof rafters and subcellar of the vast garden, Zenda was never recovered. Whether his manucapture was impracticable because he was strenuouslymoved to solitude by jealousy or any other of the impulses delicately suggested by Allen, J., in his lettered and sympathetic opinion (22 Barb.. 506) anent the contentions of and over the dogs of Oneida County, or because ferae naturae as was held (47 Hun., 366) to be the bivalve, though destitute of locomotivity, in an oyster-bed litigation in the adjoining judicial department, is not stated." This learned justice concurred in the opinion of his more solemn brethren, saying. "The learned justice of the Municipal Court before whom the parties appeared and introduced their evidence found for the plaintiff and cast the defendant in damages of fifty dollars. He was right." So much for the cat case, illustrating as it does, the leavening power of humor, which makes delightful reading of even the most prosaic matters in law books. Next, let us consider a sea lion case. It is well known that Mr. James A. Bradley was the founder of Asbury Park, and that he has been zealous to provide entertainment there for summer visitors. All the world does not know, however, that Mr. Bradley got him self into a lawsuit a few years ago on ac count of a sea lion which he bought from a fisherman who alleged that he caught it in a fish pound about seventy miles from the City of New York. A certain man, who had been in the habit of buying sea lions at the Islands of Santa Barbara and transporting them across the Continent for sale in the East, had been the owner of this particular animal, which he had not been able to sell on account of certain blemishes caused by wounds which it had received while being captured. "Hav
ing the animal thus thrown back upon his hands," says the opinion in the case, "the plaintiff placed it temporarily at Glen Island, on Long Island Sound, from which place, within a few days after its arrival there, it disappeared, and the plaintiff, quite reason ably assuming that he had no prospect of ever finding it, made no effort for its recapture. This took place during the first week of July, 1896. It was not until about a year afterwards that he discovered it in ths possession of the delendant, and having satisfied himself of its identity, which, it may be said is not in dispute here, demanded its surrender, which was refused." Mr. Bradley's refusal was based upon the ground, of course, that he had a good title to the animal, having bought it from the fisherman, as above stated. Now, there is a very nice and a humorous point of law in this case. Sea lions are wild by nature, ferae naturae, and it has been the law from time immemorial that if an animal of this kind escapes from its owner and returns to its station in life, there is no longer any right to it which the owner can assert as against any other person. Observe in this case that the sea lion was originally found at the Islands of Santa Barbara, that it was an entire stranger on the eastern shore of the United States, and that Mr. Bradley's fisherman captured it seventy miles from the City of New York, in waters entirely un familiar to it. The man who had brought the sea lion East contended that the animal had not had time to get back to its place of nativity and habitation, and that while it was in transit he had a right to it as against the founder of Asbury Park or any other person in the world. It is well to observe that no such point had been raised in the course of human events, and no wonder it was a poser for the judges who had to decide it. They wisely resolved that as there was no prece dent for the contention, and that as the rule was that the owner of a wild animal lost his property in it when it regained its liberty,.
