WASTE, in English law, has several meanings. (1) It means a common be long"ng to a manor, and by analogy is often applied to pieces of land of no great valu ly'ng at the sides of highways or the sea-shore. The presumption is that a strip )f lf.nd adjoining a highway belongs to the owner of the land next to it. (2) Wa:;te also means the spoil or destruction to houses, gardens, trees, or other corporeal hereditionents, committed by tenants for life or for years to the injury of the remainder-man ix • sioner. Thus, he who has a life estate, or an estate for years, in a house or land, cannot change the nature of things, as by turning meadow into arable, nor wood into pasture, thou:h he may better a thing of the same kind, as by draining the meadow, etc. The al p teration caused by thus diminishing an inheritance is called waste, and its characteristics are to diminish the value of the inheritance, or to increase the burden upon it, or to impair the evidence of title. Waste is either voluntary or permissive. The former consists in the commission of acts which the tenant has no authority to do—such as pulling down build ings, felling timber, or opening mines. Permissive waste arises from the omission of acts which it if the tenant's duty to do—as, for example, suffering buildings to go to decay by neglecting to repair them. There is, however, incident to every estate for life
oryears, the right to take estovers—that is, so much wood,' stone, etc., as is required for use on the tenement, for repairs, husbandry, and the like purposes. It is a common practice, in family settlements, to provide that, in addition to this privilege, the estates of the tenants for lives shall be without impeachment for waste. The effect of this clause is to enable the tenant to take timber, minerals, etc., severed by himself or others during the continuance of his estate. But even where the tenant holds without impeachment of waste, he is not entitled to cut down ornamental timber; and if he do so, a court of equity will restrain him by injunction. Wherever the tenant is committing acts of a character especially destructive to the inheritance, or still more, acts of wanton or malicious mischief, the court of chancery holds that his legal power to commit waste is being used unconseientiously, and will restrain him: