There is a natural reason also, which renders the sea, considered in the view already taken, incapable of being made property: because occupancy can never subsist, but in things that can be confined to certain permanent bounds. From whence Thucydides gives the name of infinite space to unoccupied lands, and Isocrates speaking of that occupied by the Athenians calls it that which has been measured by us into alloted parts. But fluids, which cannot be limited or restrained, except they be contained within some other substance, cannot be occupied. Thus ponds, and lakes and rivers likewise, can only be made property as far as they are confined within certain banks. But the ocean as it is equal to, or larger than the earth, cannot be confined within the land: so that the ancients said the earth was bounded in by the sea like a girdle surrounding it. Nor can any imaginable division of it have been originally framed. For as the greatest part of it was unknown, it was impossible that nations far removed from each other could agree upon the bounds to be assigned to different parts. Whatever therefore was the common property of all, and after a general division of all other things, retained its original state, could not be appropriated by division, but by occupancy. And the marks of distinction and separation by which its different parts were known, followed such appropriation. IV. The next matters to be noticed are those things, which though not yet made property, may be reduced to that condition. Under this description come waste lands, desert islands, wild beasts, fishes, and birds. Now in these cases there are two things to be pointed out, which are a double kind of occupancy that may take place; the one in the name of the Sovereign, or of a whole people, the other by individuals, converting into private estates the lands which they have so occupied. The latter kind of individual property proceeds rather from assignment than from free occupancy. Yet any places that have been taken possession of in the name of a sovereign, or of a whole people, though not portioned out amongst individuals, are not to be considered as waste lands, but as the property of the first occupier, whether it be the King, or a whole people. Of this description are rivers, lakes, forests, and wild mountains.