The childish disposition to punish irrational creatures and inanimate objects, which is common to the infancy of individuals and of races, has left a distinct trace of itself in that peculiar institution of English law known as deodand, and derived partly from Jewish and partly from old German usages and traditions. “If a horse,” says Blackstone, “or any other animal, of its own motion kill as well an infant as an adult, or if a cart run over him, they shall in either case be forfeited as deodand.” If a man, in driving a cart, tumble to the ground and lose his life by the wheel passing over him, if a tree fall on a man and cause his death, or if a horse kick his keeper and kill him, then the wheel, the tree and the horse are deodands _pro rege_, and are to be sold for the benefit of the poor. _Omnia quae movent ad mortem sunt Deo danda_ is the principle laid down by Bracton. If therefore a cart-wheel run over a man and kill him, not only is the wheel, but also the whole cart to be declared deodand, because the momentum of the cart in motion contributed to the man’s death; but if the shaft fall upon a man and kill him, then only the shaft is deodand, since the cart did not participate in the crime. It is also stated, curiously enough, that if an infant fall from a cart not in motion and be killed, neither the horse nor the cart shall be declared deodand; not so, however, if an adult come to his death in this manner. The ground of this distinction is not quite clear; although it may arise from the assumption that the child had no business there, or that such an accident could not have happened to an adult, unless there was something irregular and perverse in the conduct of the animal or the vehicle. In the archives of Maryland, edited by Dr. William Hand Browne and Miss Harrison in 1887, mention is made of an inquest held January 31, 1637, on the body of a planter, who “by the fall of a tree had his bloud bulke broken.” “And furthermore the Jurors aforesaid upon their oath aforesaid say that the said tree moved to the death of the said John Bryant; and therefore find the said tree forfeited to the Lord Proprietor.”