upon it, provided it flows in the course which natural laws direct. If the occupier of the higher ground by any artificial means alters the course of the current he sends down, the servitude of the lower land will not compel the occupier to receive such a diverted flow. But, on the other hand, if the flow from the higher to the lower level be natural, the occupier below must take measures to protect himself against the liabilities of his natural situation, and prevent the discharge of water upon himself, which, if it found an outlet to him, would not generally, however injurious, create a right of action, or be the ground of an injunction. The principles recognised by our English law are clear, and the only difficulty is in their application to the innumerable variety of circumstances which occur in practice.

Since the last edition was printed, several important cases have been decided in the Court of Appeal, with respect to discharge of water into a neighbouring mine. The case of the West Cumberland Iron and Steel Company v. Kenyon (11 Ch. Div. 782) may be considered to be a leading case on this subject. The judgment of Mr. Justice Fry (6 Ch. Div. 773) was reversed on appeal by Lords Justices James, Brett, and Cotton. The plaintiffs and the defendant were proprietors of adjoining collieries. The action was brought to restrain the defendant from permitting water to flow through a certain "bore-hole" in their mine directly or indirectly into the plaintiffs' workings, and also for damages. The plaintiffs' colliery was to the dip of the defendant's. The latter sunk a shaft by which they tapped water. That same water had formerly found its way into some old workings of

their own, and had from them percolated into the plaintiffs' mines. The defendants not only sunk the shaft and tapped the water, but they then made a bore-hole at the bottom of the shaft. It was admitted that the bore-hole was made not in the due course of mining, but only for the purpose of getting rid of the water in the shaft. The effect of this operation was to let off the water into the old workings and hollows in the defendant's own ground, from which it percolated into the plaintiffs' works in the same way it would have done if neither shaft nor bore-hole had been made. Such being the facts, Mr. Justice Fry decided in favour of the plaintiffs, upon the ground that the defendants, by making the shaft, appropriated the water, and made themselves masters of it, and so became bound to prevent it flowing into the plaintiffs' works.

The Court of Appeal reversed this decision. In giving judgment Lord Justice James said: "The evidence shows that the water which was tapped by the new shaft, and afterwards discharged through the borehole in the defendant's old workings, was water which, following the stratification of the country, had previously found its way into the same subterraneous hollows from which water was pumped up by the pumps which at one time were used at the Limefitt Shaft (defendant's old shaft), and that the same water substantially found its way down into those hollows to the same extent as it found its way afterwards through the shaft (i.e. the new shaft) and the bore-hole. Several witnesses were called-experts, who said they had no doubt that every particle of water would have gone

down, and must have been going down into the Limefitt Shaft when the pumps were going on, that being the course by which these water-bearing strata discharged their water so as to prevent it rising up above the sixteen fathoms, down to which distance the stratification was quite dry. It seems to me, upon the evidence, that there were these water-bearing strata draining down into the hollows that had been formed by the old workings of the principal vein of the Limefitt property, and thence into the lowest level, and that the defendants made a shaft which did to a certain extent tap that water, but only diverted into that shaft for a time the water which, previous to that diversion, was finding its way down into the lowest level. . . . The working of the defendant's shaft and bore-hole has not been shown to have thrown any additional water on the plaintiffs'. The way in which the case is presented to us by the defendants is this: We do not treat it as a mining question . . . we deal with it as if it were something on the surface. We have made certain things on our land, and have done that without doing you any mischief. That is to say

we have done something on our land that we had a right to do. We had occasion, or we were minded, to sink a shaft in our own land, and finding that it was getting filled with water, we made a drain from the bottom to prevent the water accumulating which would have destroyed it. But we drained the water into our own land, into some old hollows which were there

and from which the water, no doubt, found its way into the plaintiffs' land. But it found its way exactly in the same course, so far as the plaintiffs are con

cerned, as before it left our hollow, in exactly the same place, the same way and to exactly the same extent as it would have done if we had not done anything of the kind. . . . I have always understood that everybody has a right on his own land to do anything with regard to the diversion of water, or the storage of water, or the usage of water, in any way he chooses, provided that when he ceases dealing with it on his own land, when he has made such use of it as he is minded to make, he is not to allow or cause that water to go upon his neighbour's land, so as to affect that neighbour's land in some other way than the way in which it had been affected before."

Where it is proved that a mine cannot be worked without causing the destruction of the mine itself, and irreparable injury to an adjoining mine, an injunction will be granted to restrain such working at the suit of the owner of the adjoining mine. Crompton v. Lea (L. R. 19 Eq. 115).

CHAPTER XIV.

WORKING OUT OF BOUNDS.

THE working of coal beyond the limits to which the proprietor of the mine is entitled is sometimes a source of great mischief. It is not only the loss of the coal itself which may be involved, but the barrier left by the neighbouring miners may be broken through, and thus bring about calamitous results to life and property. The remedy for this injury is an action of trespass. This wrongful act is one of not unfrequent occurrence, and so many cases have at different times come before the Courts relating to the wrongful working of coal, that the law is now well settled as to the principles upon which the damages for the trespass should be assessed. "There was a technical rule in the English Courts in these matters," says Lord Blackburn, in Livingstone v. Rawyards (5 App. 39). "When something that was part of the realty is severed from the realty and converted into a chattel, then instantly on its becoming a chattel, it becomes the property of the person who had been the owner of the fee in the land whilst it remained a portion of the land; and then in estimating the damages against a person who had