Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 4.djvu/33

17 RIGHT TO WHARF TO NAVIGABLE WATER. 1/ a plain witness to a plain common juryman." ^ " If, in the course of nature, the thing itself is so imperceptible, so slow, and so gradual, as to require a great lapse of time before the results are made palpable to the ordinary senses of mankind, the law disregards that kind of imperceptible operation." ^ What would be a sensi- ble disturbance to property situated in one place would be none to property situated in another, and a disturbance hitherto imper- ceptible may become perceptible when the land is used for a different purpose.^ Whether, when the purity of the air or the quantity of running water* is in question, the law imposes an additional test, may be doubted ; if so, it is done in the interests of public policy, and does not affect the nature of the right. Several important consequences flow from considering these rights as corporeal. First, they cannot be granted away. These rights are rights against all the world, to prevent interference with property; and if they could be granted away, the only result would be that the grantee, having himself no rights over his grantor's land, would have the right to prevent others from interfering with its natural condition. The right to sue for a nuisance is no more severable than the right to sue for a trespass. Secondly, they cannot be destroyed. Property cannot exist with- out the incidents annexed to it by law for its protection. Thirdly, not being rights over the land of another, they cannot be released. Fourthly, being corporeal rights, easements may be granted in them. The right to maintain a nuisance is in strictness a right in or over another's land, and is subject in every respect to the usual laws governing the origin, continuance, and destruction of easements.^ 1 Per James, L. J., in Salvin v. North Brancepeth Coal Co., L. R. 9 Ch. 705, at p. 709. 2 Ibid. 3 Sturges v. Bridgman, 11 Ch. D. 852. nutioji not granted to non-riparian proprietors. See Ormerod v. Todmorden, 1 1 Q. B. D. 155; but cf. contra. Miller v. Miller, 9 Pa. St. 74; Wheatley v. Chrisnian, 24 Pa. St. 298. There is no such easement of pollution, however. See Blair v. Deakin, W. N. (18S7) 148. ^ " It — viz., the right to deprive land of support — was the grant of a right to disturb the soil from below and to alter the position of the surface, and is analogous to the grant of a right to damage the surface by a right of way over it." Per Lord Wensleyd'^le, Rowbotham v. Wilson, 8 H. L. C. 348. at p. 362.
 * The English law would seem to give riparian owners an easement of reasonable dimi-
 * ' There is no claim of an easement unless you make it appear that the offensive smells