Describes how the courts created rights for land owners and users competing to appropriate water for factories, town supply, drainage, and transport. This work covers the period from early times to the late nineteenth century, illustrating the changing common law of property and tort. ...to read Getzler's book as a legal historian was a humbling experience. The research is exhaustive and meticulously executed, and the resulting analysis is clearly and articulately communicated... Through the medium of a study of water rights, Getzler has articulated a masterful and illuminating account of the development of the common law as a whole.'