250 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. tion by an owner of abutting land for injunction, the Supreme Court held that, since there was no change in the mode of using the streets, but only in the motive-power, there was no additional servitude. The court distinguished this case from those relating to telegraph and telephone wires, by saying that these are not used to facilitate the use of the streets for travel and transportation, " whereas the poles and wires of the railroad company are directly ancillary to the uses of the street as such, in that they communicate the power by which the cars are propelled." Judge Dillon throws discredit upon this decision by saying, " The distinction last mentioned is so fine as to be almost impalpable, and it suggests serious doubts whether both conclusions are sound and reconcilable. The gen- eral subject awaits further development and settlement." This remark was made less than a year ago, and the subject is already being rapidly developed, and must soon reach a settle- ment. The law must follow close upon the progress of inventions, and the application of electricity to street railroads is being made so quickly and so generally that the conclusions of the law in regard to the use of the new power cannot be long delayed. It is, of course, too soon yet to attempt in an article in a magazine to say how the questions will be settled by the general concurrence of decisions or by the weight of authority, but we may consider some of the principles involved in the discussion, and refer to the cases which have been decided in various courts since this remark of Judge Dillon's upon the case determined in Rhode Island last February. It is hard to tell whether Judge Dillon means to suggest that the courts were mistaken in holding that the telegraph and the telephone do not come within the natural and proper uses of the street, or whether he thinks that it is going too far to allow the electric railway. It may well be that the distinction between the telegraph and the railway is not sound, and yet that the railway is a proper use of the street. Whether both are to be included in the same class depends a good deal on the breadth of the view that is taken of the proper uses of a street. If these are confined to travel and transportation, then the railway may be included, while the telegraph is left out; but if the use of the street is to provide for communication, then it would seem to be just as well to send messages along it upon wires arranged for the purpose, as to send them on by men on horseback, or in heavy
