“When the use is public, the necessity or expediency of appropriating any particular property is not a subject of judicial cognizance. Consequently, if in the legislative judgment it is expedient to do so, it has the power expressly to authorize a municipal corporation compulsorily to acquire the absolute fee simple to lands of private persons condemned for street or any other public purpose. The authorities are so numerous and uniform to this effect that an extended citation of them is unnecessary. * * * It is often laid down as the law that the taking of property must always be limited to the necessity of the case, and, consequently, no more can be appropriated in any instance than is needed for the particular use for which the appropriation is made. But it will be found that this is almost invariably said, not in discussing the extent of the power of the legislature, but with reference to the construction of statutes granting authority to exercise the right of eminent domain, and where the authority to take a certain quantity of land or a particular estate therein depended, not upon an express grant of power to do so, but upon the existence of an alleged necessity, from which the disputed power is to be implied.” The city of Brooklyn acquired land for public parks under a statute authorizing the acquisition of the title, and the court, in sustaining the validity of a subsequent act of the legislature authorizing the sale of portions of the land no longer needed, said: “Doubtless, in most cases, when land is condemned for a special purpose on the score of public utility, the sequestration is limited to that particular use. But this is where the property is not taken, but the use only. Then, the right of the public being limited to the use, when the use ceases the right ceases. Where the property is taken, the owner paid its true value, and the title vested in the public, it owns the whole property, and not merely the use; and though the particular use may be abandoned, the right to the property remains.”[85] Land acquired for canal purposes has often been held to have vested absolutely in the state, so that upon abandonment of the canal the premises could be devoted to a different use or sold to a private purchaser.[86] Some courts have intimated that land condemned for park purposes is presumptively dedicated to that use forever; and, hence, that authority to condemn for such a use implies authority to take the absolute title. Moreover, if a statute provided that land acquired for a public purpose could be sold when no longer needed, the implication would seem to be unavoidable that the title acquired under the statute was absolute. No general authority, however, has as yet been conferred upon municipalities in this state to take under the power of eminent domain a title that would survive the public use.