Odger's English Common Law

PUBLIC RIGHTS. 11
A navigable river is a public higbway as far as tbe ebb
and flow of tbe tide extends. If tbe course of sucb a river
be changed by tbe act of God, the right of tbe public is
ipso facto diverted into the new channel.
Every one has the right to fish in the high sea and within
the territorial waters of his own State, and also to fish in any
tidal waters, such as a creek of the sea, or an estuary of a
river so far up it as the ebb and flow of the tide reaches.
But the right of the public to fish in a creek of the sea or
estuary of a river will be excluded, if some subject shows that
the exclusive right to fish therein is vested in him either by
grant from the Crown or by prescription. And in most places
where the right of fishing is valuable, tbe public generally
find that an exclusive right of fishing is vested in the lord of
some manor or the corporation of some adjoining borough.
" Every man has a natural right to enjoy the air pure and
free from noxious smells or vapours and any one, who sends
on his neighbour's land that which makes the air impure, is
guilty of a nuisance." 1
Hence, the owner of a chemical
factory can be restrained from poisoning the air with fumes of
sulphur or alkali by any of his neighbours to whom such
fumes are a nuisance ; and a tramway company can be
restrained from using creosoted wood blocks, the fumes of
which kill the trees and flowers in the adjoining gardens. 2
But no one has a right to the access of the open air to his
land across his neighbour's land. 3 Thus the owner of a
windmill cannot prevent the owner of adjoining land from
building so as to interrupt the passage of air to the mill,
though the mill has been worked thus for over twenty years. 4
So no man has a right to have the view or prospect from his
house preserved for his enjoyment ;
the owners of the adjoin-
ing land are entitled to build so as to block it out, provided
they do not materially interfere with the access of light to
his ancient windows.
i Per Lopes, L. J., in Chastey v. Aekland, [1895] 2 Ch. at p. 396.
2 West v. Bristol Tramways Co., [1908] 2 K. B. 14.
3 But a man may by long-continued user acquire a right to the access of air
along " some definite channel constructed for the purpose of containing aud communicating
it." Per Lopes, L. J., in Chastey v. Aekland, [1895] 2 Ch. at p. 39"
* Webb v. Bird (1862), 13 C. B. N. S. 841.
6 See post, p. 571.