Bailey

— The complaint charges an unlawful entry and a forcible detainer under the second section of the act of April 2, 1866: Stats. 1865-66, p. 768.

The entry is alleged to have been made on the twenty-fourth day of June, 1870, upon a quarter section of land, parcel of a tract of from fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred acres claimed by the plaintiff.

The plaintiff had judgment and the defendant has appealed.

We think the plaintiff showed a possession sufficient to entitle him to maintain the action. The land was not inclosed, but the plaintiff had for four years cultivated in wheat nearly all of the larger tract and all of the smaller parcel in controversy. A fence is not essential to an actual possession: Ellicott v. Pearl, 10 Pet. (U. S.) 442, 9 L. Ed. 488 . Adverse or prior possession may be established by proof of cultivation: Statute of Limitations, sec. 13; Polack v. McGrath, 32 Cal. 21 .

We are also of the opinion that the evidence was sufficient to prove that the defendant detained “by force and with a strong hand or by menaces and threats of violence” at least so much of the land as he prevented the plaintiff from plowing.

When the defendant was building his house in…