POLES AND WIRES FOR ELECTRIC RAILWAY, 26 1 railroad companies," and was passed in 1881. The city gave the company license in 1882 to operate their road by horse or electri- cal power. The court held that the Legislature must be supposed to have contemplated new discoveries and inventions, and that they must not be understood as meaning to exclude the new and useful appliances that might be invented, and that the language of the act was broad enough to cover a street railroad, whether the cars are drawn by horses or propelled by electricity. It was held also that there was no change in the use of the street, and that neither in this, nor by reason of danger and noise, was there a new servitude imposed upon the land. The latest decision on the subject, so far as we know, is that of Vice-Chancellor Van Fleet, of New Jersey, from which we have quoted already. The case is Halsey v. The Rapid Transit R'y Co., Court of Chancery, N. J., Dec. 6, 1890, 20 Atl. Rep. 859, to appear in 47 N. J. Equity Reports. The company was organized under a general law, passed in 1886, " to provide for the incorpora- tion of street railways and to regulate the same." Nothing is said in the act about the kind of motive-power to be used. This gen- eral grant was of itself sufficient, the court said, to include electric power, and the decision on this point has been quoted already. There was, however, other legislation. A statute had been passed authorizing any street railroad to use electric motors, with the con- sent of the city. Such consent had been given by resolution speci- fying the overhead system, and providing for poles either on the sides or in the middle of the street, every other pole in the middle of the street to be furnished with a group of incandescent lights. The railroad company was about to put up poles one hundred and twenty- five feet apart, in the middle of the street, in front of the complainant's tannery. The bill was filed for an injunction, and it was insisted that the resolution of the Common Council went beyond the statute in authorizing the use of poles, apd that the poles occupied land belonging to the complainant and interfered with his easements in the street, for all of which he was entitled to compensation, which not being provided for, the acts of the com- pany were unlawful. The Vice-Chancellor held that the overhead system was included in the legislative grant; that the testimony of Thomas A. Edison and other witnesses showed that this was the best electrical system,
