Odger's English Common Law

WILD ANIMALS. 341
killing. The man who kills the game and picks it up is the
first possessor of it. 1
If he, after killing it, leaves it con-
cealed on the soil, not with the intention of abandoning
the possession, but intending to return and take it away
when it should be convenient for him to do so, then, if
he afterwards takes it away, he is not guilty of larceny
the killing and taking away are deemed one continuous act,
although an appreciable time may have intervened. 3
however, the man who kills a wild animal makes no attempt
to take possession of it, but leaves it with the intention of
abandoning it, then it comes into the possession of the owner
of the land on which it fell dead without any act of taking
possession on his part, and if the man who killed it, or any
third person, subsequently carries it away, he is guilty of
larceny. And now by section 4 of the Larceny Act, 1916,
" every person, who wilfully kills any animal with intent to
steal the carcase, skin or any part of the animal killed, shall
be guilty of felony."
Again, an animal wild by nature may be tamed ; it may
be either confined, or so far reclaimed that it does not desire
to escape from its captor's premises. Such animals thus
become private property. Hence pheasants reared in a coop
can be stolen, 8 and swans, if branded with their owner's
mark ; and, by a curious survival of Eoman law, so can bees,
unless they swarm beyond pursuit. Such animals are regarded
as being under the care and dominion of their owner.
Tame animals are private property from the time of their
birth. But the common law did not regard them as of
sufficient importance to be the subject of a prosecution for
larceny, unless they were good to eat, or produced food, or
were capable of drawing a cart, plough or some other vehicle
or useful implement. Thus a horse, sheep or cow, or any
domestic animal which laid eggs or gave milk, could be
stolen, but not a dog, cat, parrot or canary.
1 A person, who has no right of shooting over the land, does not by merely killing
or wounding a wild animal reduce it into his possession : B. v. Boe (1870), 11 Cox,
551, 557.
» B. v. Townley (1870), L. E. 1 C. C. B. 315 ; B. v. Fetch (1878), 14 Cox, 116 ;
and see R. v. Read (1878), 3 Q. B. D. 131 ; R. v. Stride and Millard, [1908] 1 K. B.
617.
8 B. v. Cory (1864), 10 Cox, 23.
;
If,