not be worked, if the company are willing to purchase them. In that respect it puts all the world on the same footing, whether they are grantors or strangers. But if the company are unwilling to purchase, then the owners may work them, which means, that if the company desire to exclude the owners from working the mines, they can, by taking the proper course, do so. If they do not, then they may go on working the mines without doing unnecessary damage." This judgment has since been affirmed in the Court of Exchequer Chamber. Lord Chief Justice Cockburn said that the 77th and 78th clauses of the Railway Clauses Consolidation Act must be read together, and expressed himself in substance to the same effect as the Lord Chief Baron in the Court below. In the case of the Great Western Railway Company v. Bennett, in the House of Lords (Law Reports, 1867, Appellate S. p. 27), it was held that by the effect of the 77th, 78th, and 79th clauses a railway company, on purchasing land for the railway, does not become entitled to the mines under the land: the owner may work them after notice duly given; and if, after such notice, the company, though desiring to prevent the working, does not give compensation for the minerals, the owner may work them up to and under the railway, working them in a "proper manner," and according to the usual manner of working such mines in the district. The company cannot under this statutory purchase claim the benefit of the right of an ordinary purchaser of the surface to subjacent and adjacent support, the statute having created a specific law for such matters, by which alone the rights of the mine owner and the company are regulated. The Lord Chancellor said that the writ of error in this case was virtually brought upon the decision of the Court of Exchequer Chamber in Fletcher's case, as the present one was decided upon the authority of the former without argument. It will be perceived that when the owner proceeds to work the minerals after the railway company have declined the option of purchase, the latter are not entitled to claim the usual common-law right to the support of the surface they occupy. But this is an exceptional case, and the rule seems to be grounded entirely upon the neglect on the part of the company of the equitable provisions of the statute. The opposite doctrine was upheld in the case of the Caledonian Railway Company v. Sprot, in the House of Lords (2 Macqueen, 449), where land had been conveyed to a railway company in Scotland for the purpose of the railway, prior to the Railway Clauses Consolidation Act. It was decided that such a conveyance gives a right by implication to all reasonable subjacent and adjacent support connected with the subject matter of the conveyance, and that, therefore, although in the conveyance the minerals are reserved, the grantor is not entitled to work them, even under his own land, in any manner calculated to endanger the railway. On the same principle, "if the owner of a house were to convey the upper story to a purchaser, reserving all below the upper story, such purchaser would on general principles have a right to prevent the owner of the lower stories from interfering T with the walls and beams upon which the upper story rests, so as to prevent them from affording proper support." The distinction between this case and that of the previous one is this, that here the conveyance was not a conveyance under the statute, but an ordinary private assurance. "There is an obvious distinction," said Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, "between an ordinary purchaser and one who acquires the surface by a compulsory purchase, under the Land Clauses Consolidation Act, 1845," and upon this distinction the diversity of the decisions depends. Similar provisions have been inserted in various Acts of Parliament, incorporating canal companies, and enabling them to purchase lands for the formation of a canal. The effect of them is to deprive the company of the right to support for the railway or canal from coal, ironstone, slate, or minerals beneath the surface. of the adjoining land, or beneath the land over which the railway or canal is carried, unless they have purchased the slate or minerals, or compensation has been given in the manner prescribed by the statute. Under statutory provisions of this sort, the company do not in the first instance pay to the landowner more than the value of the surface in the shape of purchase money or for the injury to the surface, if only compensation is made for damage. The minerals. remain the property of the owner of the soil. But where he is desirous of getting them, the company have the option of purchasing at a fair price, to be settled in case of dispute in the usual way. These provisions are for the benefit of the company, who are relieved from the great expense of buying the minerals along the whole line of an intended railway or canal in the first instance, before it is constructed, and are enabled to postpone the purchase of them until the time when, from the state of the market in the neighbourhood, the owners really want to get them. When this happens, the company have an option either to buy, (in which case the landowner cannot get the minerals, but is fully compensated for the loss of that right,) or not to buy, in which case he receives no compensation at all, and his right to get them remains as complete as if no railway had been made. In the case of canal companies, it has been held that clauses in Acts of Parliament requiring coal owners to give notice to the company of their intention to work their mines within a certain distance of the canal, and giving liberty to the company to inspect the works, and to prohibit the owners, upon compensation being made, from working within that distance, were framed for the purpose of enabling the company to purchase out the rights of the coal owners, if they thought their canal works likely to be endangered by the nearer approach of the miners; that if the company declined the purchase, the coal owners were left to their common-law rights, as if no canal had been made; and they might take every part of their coal in the same manner as they might have done before the Act passed; their former rights in that respect not having been taken away by the Act, which has only appropriated the surface of the land, and so much of the soil as was necessary for |