Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 4.djvu/179

 GEOGAN V. TOWN OF HAYWAED. 165 �was essential. No sueh acceptance could have been had until the town was organized by the legislature. Until then there were no oiScers of the public to express an acceptance, and Castro held the legal title of the property dedicated in trust for thepublic, being preeluded by his sales from the'assertion of ownership freed from the public easement. A formai acceptance by the public authorities of a dedioation may be necessary to impose upon them the duty of .protecting the prop; erty and keeping it in a condition to meet the uses designed, — as, for instance, to open and repair a street, — but it is in no respect essential to complete the dedication and preclude the original owner from revoking it. The. dedication is irrev- ocable when third parties have been induced to act upon it and part with value in consideration of it. Nor is this irrev- ocable character of the dedication affected because the prop- erty is not at once subjected to the uses designed. In many instances, perhaps the greater number, there may be no pres- ent need of the land for the purposes contemplated, as in the case of streets and parks laid out upon a tract added to an existing city to meet its, supposed future growth, or, as in the present case, upon a tract selected as a site for a new town. In such cases it is understood that the property will only be subjected to the uses intended as it may be from time to time needed to meet the growth of the place. If an iûimediate Bubjection were required in such cases, the object of the dedi- cation would be defeated. �As already indicated, adjudications in cases similar to the one now before the court are numerous, and in ail of them, without exception, the views here expressed are sustained. One of them — Rowan's Executors v. The Town of Portland, 8 B. Mon. 232 — may be mentioned as especially learned and instructive upon the subject. �The change in the position of some of the streets 66 feet further west of their original position, as shown on the map of 1 864, when only two sales had been made, does not appear to have met with any objection from the previous purchasers; and the subsequent sales according to the map of 1856, and the approval by the trustees of the town of the survey of 1877, ����