Odger's English Common Law

340 LARCENY.
them away was not deemed to have committed larceny, a
result, no doubt, of the extreme severity with which larceny
was punished in former days. And this still remains law.
Thus, if things which are attached to the land or to any building are
severed from the realty with the intention of being illegally carried away,
the person who severs them cannot be convicted of larceny ; they have
never come, as chattels, into the possession of the owner of the realty. If,
however, after severing them he intentionally abandons them, they come
into the possession of the owner ;
and if the man who severs them returns
on a subsequent occasion and takes them away, he can be convicted of
larceny, because the severance and the taking away are distinct and
separate acts and do not form part of the same continuous transaction.
Thus a man, who rips bell-wires or lead piping from an empty or unfinished
house and carries them away, cannot be convicted of larceny. But it is
larceny if a man pulls out bell-wires in sheer wantonness and leaves them
lying in an empty house, and then, as the result of an afterthought,
returns and takes them away. A fortiori, if they are removed by some one
else who finds them lying loose in the house.
(b) Wild Jnimals.
Wild animals, such as deer, hares, rabbits, fish, birds, &c,
were not, whilst alive and free, subjects of larceny at common
law. They are nobody's property until they are killed,
tamed or confined. As soon as any such wild animal is killed,
it becomes the property of the owner of the soil on which
it is killed. To this rule there is one exception : if the owner
of the soil has conferred upon another the right of killing deer
or game thereon, such deer or game, when killed, will be the
property of that other. 1
No one cau be convicted of stealing even a dead wild
animal, if it has never yet come into the possession of any one.
If the man who killed it did so with the felonious intention
of taking possession of it and carrying it away, then it never
comes into the possession of the owner, and therefore it
cannot be stolen from him. This is so even where the dead
animal is not carried away at once, provided its subsequent
removal was part of one continuous transaction with the
» Bladen v. Biggs (1865), 31 L. J. C. P. 286 ; Ground Game Act, 1880 (43&44
Vict. o. 47). !