Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol II).djvu/30

 18 alo all catles, houes, and other buildings: for they conit, aith he, of two things; land, which is the foundation; and tructure thereupon: o that, if I convey the land or ground, the tructure or building paeth therewith. It is obervable that water is here mentioned as a pecies of land, which may eem a kind of olecim; but uch is the language of the law: and I cannot bring an action to recover poeion of a pool or other piece of water, by the name of water only; either by calculating it's capacity, as, for o many cubical yards; or, by uperficial meaure, for twenty acres of water; or by general decription, as for a pond, a watercoure, or a rivulet: but I mut bring my action for the land that lies at the bottom, and mut call it twenty acres of land covered with water. For water is a moveable, wandering thing, and mut of neceity continue common by the law of nature; o that I can only have a temporary, tranient, uufructuary property therein: wherefore if a body of water runs out of my pond into another man's, I have no right to reclaim it. But the land, which that water covers, is permanent, fixed, and immoveable: and therefore in this I may have a certain, ubtantial property; of which the law will take notice, and not of the other.

hath alo, in it's legal ignification, an indefinite extent, upwards as well as downwards. Cujus et olum, ejus et uque ad coelum, is the maxim of the law, upwards; therefore no man may erect any building, or the like, to overhang another's land: and, downwards, whatever is in a direct line between the urface of any land, and the center of the earth, belongs to the owner of the urface; as is every day's experience in the mining countries. So that the word "land" includes not only the face of the earth, but every thing under it, or over it. And therefore if a man grants all his lands, he grants thereby all his mines of metal and other foils, his woods, his waters, and his houes, as well as his fields and meadows. Not but the particular names of the things are equally ufficient to pas them, except in the intance Rh