JUDGMENT

1. This is a second appeal by the plaintiff who got a decree for damages to the extent of Rs. 200 from the Court of first instance which was reversed by the lower appellate Court. The suit was brought on the allegations that the house and the shop of the plaintiff have been enjoying the right of easement of support from the wall of the defendant's shop for more than 30 years, and that the defendant had altered the course of a deep drain bringing it close to the boundary of the plaintiff's land, with the result that the southern wall and the ground floor and the upper storey of the plaintiff's house along with a roof had fallen down. The facts as regards the cause of the damage is as follows:

The learned Munsif has come to the conclusion that the damage caused to the plaintiff's house and shop was chiefly due to the excavation of the nala. I agree with the learned Munsif in this finding.

2. But the lower appellate Court also came to the finding:

"There is no definite evidence to show that the period of 20 years had been completed before the alleged encroachment. I am of opinion that the plaintiff failed to establish any right of support for his building.

3. We may note that this finding is also the finding of the Munsif. In second appeal it was argued that the sanction granted by the Municipality for raising constructions and the final report about their completion were public documents, and the Court below was wrong in discarding the latter as unreliable. On 4th April 1904, the plaintiff made an application to build his house. u/s 87(4), Act 1 of 1920, it was necessary for the plaintiff to commence his building within one year of sanction being granted on that application. The exact date of granting sanction is not shown. The plaintiff next relied on a report dated 11th March 1905, by a municipal jamadar to the effect that completion had been made according to the order. In those clays apparently there was no further inspection of buildings. The lower appellate Court deals with this evidence as follows:

An application for sanction to build the house was made in 1904, but there is no,satisfactory evidence to show when the construction was completed. The municipal jamadar's report is not a very reliable or convincing document, and the probability is that the jamadar was concerned only with constructions abutting on the municipal streets. The oral evidence on the point consists of the statements of the plaintiff and Chiraunji Lal. They have both given a vague period of 20 or 22 years. There is no definite evidence to show that the period of 20 years had been completed before the alleged encroachment.

4. We are of opinion that no doubt we would have come to a different finding on the evidence before the lower appellate Court but we consider that it is not open to us to reverse that finding in second appeal, and accordingly we are bound by that finding

5. The next ground advanced in second appeal was that on the facts found the plaintiff's right of support to his building was legally established, and that the view of law taken by the Court below as to the plaintiff's right of support from adjacent land and the defendant's right to dig a drain just close to the plaintiff's wall was unsound and incorrect The argument of the learned Counsel for the appellant was that quite apart from the period of 20 years his client having made a wall on the ground had a right of support from the subjacent wall of the defendant u/s 7, Easements Act. He referred for this proposition to illustration (e) and the explanation to that illustration. In this connexion we may refer to Peacock's Law relating to Easements in British India, Edn. 3, p. 139, which states as follows:

The right of support for land in its naturals condition by adjacent land is a natural right and incidental to the ownership of property. Any change in the land supported which converts its natural character into an artificial character such as would be caused by placing,, buildings upo