OWNERSHIP is not a legal term, though it is used frequently in law to denote the highest degree or kind of property which onecan have in anything. Owner is often used in this sense as contradistinguished from an occupier, who has only a temporary interest in the property. Thus a freeholder, or one who holds a freehold estate in hunt is an owner; though, in common parlance, it is not unusual also to describeas owner any one who has a long lease of the property. When a person is owner in fee of land, he has certain rights more or less absolute as incidental thereto, for example, he may build on his land as high as he pleaseS, subject only to doing no direct injury to his neighbor, such as darkening his windows; and he may as deep as he pleases, or. as it is said, to the center of the earth. There are certain things which are said to be incapable of ownership. such as the air, the sea, and the water of navigable rivers, as to each of which every individual member of the public has the right merely of using it, hut no one has the ownership—i.e., the exclusive right of property as well as possession thereof. As to
things wild, such as birds, beasts, fishes, the rule is that lie ono first catches the animal becomes the owner thereof, and acquires such a property in it that any one who takes it from him against his will commits larceny. But though the person who first catches a wild animal is entitled to it. penalties are sometimes imposed upon the person catching it, as to which see GAME, POACHING. In regard to lost property—i.e., property which had once been appropriated and possessed by some one, but who has casually iost or abandoned it—the rule is that he who finds it is entitled to keep it•, provided at the time of finding it he had no means of ascertaining the owner. But the true owner. if he discover and can identify the property, can always in general reclaim it from the finder.
See LOST PROPERTY.