[1] Waters and Water Bights — Natural Water Channel — Long-continued Existence — Manner of Creation Immaterial. — A channel which has existed for years as the natural channel for the drainage of the watershed tributary to it has all the attributes of a water channel wholly natural in its origin, regardless of what its origin may have been in fact.

[2] Id.—Channel With Defined Bed and Banks—Dryness in Certain Times of Year—Watercourse.—A channel with defined bed and banks made and habitually used by water passing down as a collected body or stream in those seasons of the year and at those times when the streams in the region are accustomed to flow is a watercourse in the legal sense, although dry except in the winter and spring and at intervals even in those seasons. '

[3] Id.—Action Against County—Damages to Land—Construction of Storm Drains—Drain Constructed by Municipality.—In an action against a county for damages for injury to land resulting from the construction of storm drains, no relief can be given in regard to a drain constructed by a city which merely carried into the county drains water which otherwise would have flowed into the wash into which the county drains emptied.

[4] Id.—Surface Waters—Bights of Land Owner.—Surface waters in the legal sense are those which fall on the land by precipitation from the skies or arise in springs and spread over the surface of the ground without being collected into a definite body, and as to such, a land owner may not gather them together on his land by artificial means and discharge them on lower lying land in greater volume or in a different manner than they would naturally be discharged.

[5] Id.—Drainage Improvements—Increased Volume of Water—-Injury to Lower Owíter—Damages not Becoverable.—An improvement for the purposes of the drainage and protection of lands above does not give a lower riparian owner on the stream a cause of action merely because such improvement increases the volume of water in the stream as it comes to his land, even though the burden he is necessarily under of protecting his land against the stream- is thereby increased and his land is injured because of his failure to -meet such increased burden.

1. Conversion of artificial into natural watercourse, notes, 14 Ann. Cas. 909; 16 L. B. A. (H. S.) 2S0.

2. Distinguishing characteristic watercourse, note, 1 L. B. A. (W. S.) 756.

4.. Bight to -collect or divert surface water in masses, note, 21 L. B. A. 595.

5. Bight to drain surface water into watercourse, note, 24 L. B. A. (N. S.) 903.

[6] Id.—Limitation of Rule.—The rule that no action lies simply because of an increase in the volume of a stream caused by improvements for drainage above is not subject to the limitation that thereby the natural capacity of the channel be not exceeded, or, in other words, that the lands below be not flooded.

[7] Id. — Construction of Storm Drains — Increased Volume of Water—Nonliability of County to Lower Owner.—A county is not liable for injury to land from the construction of drains for the protection of its inhabitants, where the whole effect of the drains, so far as increasing the volume of the stream was concerned, was to add no water to that already in the channel, but merely to pass such waters more completely and more speedily from one point in the channel to another, all entirely above plaintiff’s land.

[8] Counties—Injury from Improvement—Constitutional Law.—A county is not liable under section 14 of article I of the constitution, which provides that private property shall not be taken or damaged for a public use without just compensation, for an injury inflicted by an improvement made by it which would have been damnum absque injuria as between private parties.