Common claimed by prescription (which supposes a grant) may be as various as grants may be. A right of common thus founded may be either annexed to land (when it is said to be appurtenant), or altogether independent of any property in laud, when it is said to be in gross. Common in gross must be claimed either by prescription or by deed ; and is not appendant or appurte nant to any certain land. If common of pasture, it may be for any kind of animals, whether commonable or not, as swine and geese. The number of animals may be fixed, or absolutely unlimited, and they need not be the commoner's own.
Common appurtenant may be severed from the land to which it was originally annexed, and then it becomes common in gross.
The title to common by custom is peculiar to copyholders and may also give the commoner various modifications of right.
Right of common of pasture may also be claimed because of vucinage, or neigh bourhood. This is where two wastes belonging to different lords of manors adjoin each other without being separated by a fence. The cattle lawfully put upon the one common may then stray, or rather are excused for straying, into the other.
The rights of the owner of the soil over which a right of common exists, are all such rights as flow from ownership, and are not inconsistent with the com moner's rights.
Rights of common are conveyed, like all other incorporeal hereditaments, by deed of grant. When they are annexed to land, they will pass with the land by any conveyance which is adapted to trans fer the laud.
Rights of common are liable to be ex tinguished in several ways, and often contrary to the intentions of parties. It is a rule, that if the owner of common appurtenant purchase any part of the land over which the right extends, the right of common is altogether extinguished; it is the same if he release his right over any part of the land. This unreasonable rule, however, does not extend to common ap pendant, though that will be extinguished if the commoner becomes the owner of all the land in which he has common, and partial extinguishment of the common will follow from acquisition of part of the laud. The enfranchisement of a copyhold to which a right of common is annexed extinguishes the right.
The most common mode of extinguish ing rights of common in modern times is by inclosure under act of parliament. (INcLosuax; also generally on this sub ject Woolrych, on Rights of Common ;' Coke on Littleton, 122 a; Comyn's Di gest, tit. Common ;' and Blackstone's Commentaries, book ii. chap. 3.)