AVULSION (Lat. a vulsio, a tearing off, Fr. a, from + rellere, to tear away). The sudden transfer by natural forces of a portion of one HUM'S land to the soil of another. The term is applied as well to the result of a sudden change in the course of a boundary river, the relied= or encroachment of the sea, as to an actual tear ing away of a portion of A's land and its deposit upon or against the land of B, as the result of a Hood. The title to the soil so carried away or transferred is not affected by the physical change in its situation, and the owner is entitled to recover the possession thereof from the per son to whose soil it has become annexed. In this respect it differs from accretion or a gradual and imperceptible addition to the land of a riparian proprietor by the action of the water. (See ACCRETION.) Thus, if the sea permanently recedes so rapidly that the relietion of the water is perceptible in its progress, the case is one of avulsion. and the land exposed continues to be
the property of the State, as when it was still covered by the sea. This rule may be varied by custom, however, as in the case of the river Severn, below Gloucester Bridge, which (says Lord Bale) "is the common boundary of the manors of either side, what course soever the river takes," and is the case of the Missouri River, as to which a similar doctrine has been laid down by the United States Supreme Court, to cover the effect of the rapid current of the river upon the loose soil composing its banks (Nebraska v. Iowa, 143 U. S. 359). Even here, however, the court is careful to distinguish the case of the cutting of the new channel above Omaha in 1873, which is described as an avul sion and as leaving the land titles on either side up the stream unaffected. See Au.uvioN; RIPAR IAN RIGHTS; RICERS; SEA SHORE.