Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume X.djvu/174

 168 LARCENY pleasure take the thing from their hands ; there- fore they may commit larceny of any goods in their custody which came to them by deliv- ery from the master, or were otherwise in his legal possession. In all cases in which the legal possession is rightfully acquired, it is plain that trespass and therefore larceny cannot be possi- ble. This principle may be practically illus- trated by the example of lost goods. The find- er may lawfully take such goods into his pos- session. He acquires a special property in them, defeasible only by the owner, and in vir- tue of this has the legal possession, so that, though he afterward ascertain who the owner is, and with felonious intent convert the goods to his own use, he is not guilty of larceny. To constitute the crime in such cases, the finder must at the time of the finding either know the owner, or have means of knowing him, or have reason to believe that he may be found, and must at that time have the felonious in- tent of appropriating the goods to his own use. The essential element and criterion of a tres- pass is the wrongful force. This force need not be exerted physically. It may consist in the unjust use of legal process. So it is a suf- ficient trespass to entice away an animal by the voice, or by offering food. A thief commits a trespass when he has gotten the control of an article by inspiring fear in the owner. In these cases the law refers the surrender of the own- ership to the thief's act of force. Not so, however, when one is induced by a fraud to part with his property. Whatever remedy the defrauded owner may have in such a case in civil jurisprudence, in the criminal law there is no larceny; and though the intent of the taker were ever so felonious, yet the owner's consent precludes the act of trespass without which, as we have seen, the offence is not com- plete. So, if one obtains goods by falsely per- sonating the party who had ordered them, he is not guilty of larceny, whatever be his in- tent, for the owner means to pass the property in the goods by the delivery. But, on the oth- er hand, if he gets the loan of an article, his concurrent intent being to steal it, the owner's consent avails him nothing, and he commits the crime. The same principle applies to those cases in which an owner delivers goods with the understanding that the property in them is to pass when the price is paid, but the taker's object is to get possession of them without any intention of performing this condition. The second intent essential to constitute the crime is the intent to deprive the owner of his own- ership, or of his whole right of property, in distinction from any mere particular interest in it. So that he is no thief who takes a horse, however wrongfully, with the intention of using and then returning him. The common law distinction between grand and petit lar- ceny, which was determined by the value of the thing stolen, is in the United States very generally abolished. Compound larceny is lar- ceny aggravated by taking the thing stolen LARCH from the house or person of the party against whom the theft is committed. LARCH (larix, the ancient name), a genus of deciduous coniferous trees, of the pine sub- family. They have at times been classed with the pines and the firs, from both of which they differ, principally in their deciduous clustered leaves and simple pollen grains. There are but few species, natives of mountainous coun- tries in the northern parts of both hemi- spheres. The American larch (L. Americana) extends from the mountains of Virginia north- ward to Hudson bay; in New England and Canada it is known as hackmatack, and in the southern and western states it is called tamarack. In the forests it reaches the height of YO ft., but is usually much smaller ; in its more northern localities it is found on uplands, American Larch (Larix Americana). but as it advances south it more frequently grows in moist soil ; in cultivation it succeeds on almost any soil, but makes the most rapid growth in a deep and moist one. It is a slen- der, erect tree, with horizontal branches ; the primary leaves are scattered ; the secondary ones are many in a fascicle, developed early in the spring from lateral, scaly, and globular buds ; they are linear, about an inch long, of a very soft texture, of a light bluish green, which becomes in autumn a soft yellow color. The sterile catkins are borne near the ends of the branches, erect, round, and about a quarter of an inch long ; the fertile ones, placed near the middle of the branches, are erect, half an inch long, of few scales, which at flowering time are of a crimson color ; the ripe cone is about three fourths of an inch long. Some make a distinction between the black and the red larch,