In many of the states there are statutes regulating the killing of certain kinds of wild birds and the catching of fish during certain seasons of the year. Game and fish, like air and water, to a large extent, are the common inheritance of mankind and they belong to the entire community collectively, and always have been the subject of legislative control.344 The power of the legislature to enact laws for the protection and preservation of fish in the waters of the state has been so frequently exercised and so long and uniformly acquiesced in, that the exercise of the power is scarcely open to question.345 Fish in streams or bodies of water have always been classed by the common law as terae natura, in which the owner of the soil covered by the water has at best but a qualified property, though he may have the sole and exclusive right of fishing in such waters.346

341 People vs. Whittemore, 102 Mich., 519; People vs. Choyn-ski, 95 Cal., 640.

342 State vs. Brownlee, 84 Iowa, 473.

343 People vs. Thompson, 97 N. Y., 313; State vs. Bruce. 24 Me., 71. 344 Hughes' Cr. Law, Sec. 1012;

Parker vs. People, 111 Ill., 588;

State vs. Lewis, 134 Ind.. 250. 345 People vs. Bridges, 142 Ill., 41.