In the English law, detinue and detainer: detinue applied chiefly to movables; detainer, to immovables. Under detinue and detainer cases are also comprised, in which the offense consists in forbearing to transfer the legal possession of the thing: such oases may be considered as coming under the head of wrongful non-investment. The distinction between mere physical possession and legal possession, where the latter is short-lived and defeasible, seems scarcely hitherto to have been attended to. In a multitude of instances they are confounded under the same expressions. The cause is, that probably under all laws, and frequently for very good reasons, the legal possession, with whatever certainty defeasible upon the event of a trial, is, down to the time of that event, in many cases annexed to the appearance of the physical.