660 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES 



the rivers to be royal and free; that Stephen Bathory's charter only 

 guaranteed to the nobility the usufruct of lands belonging to them, and 

 not of the royal rivers; that the government ordinance of 1808 had been 

 expressly annulled by the ordinance of March 26, 1826. It was said that 

 the royal decree of January 31, 1823, had only exempted the fisheries 

 from the tax on landed property, and had placed them under the cate- 

 gory of trade-taxes ; §§ 3 to 6 and 9 of part II, as well as §§ 108, 110, 

 111, and 113 of the old Galician law of 1797, proved that fishing in the 

 public waters was not an exclusive right of the landed proprietors, but 

 a prerogative of the state or of those persons to whom the state had 

 granted it. 



When these different views of the Galician authorities were laid 

 before the imperial ministries in 1864, they resolved that in Galicia also 

 the fishing privilege should be considered a private right, because 

 the general law in its § 414 had enumerated it among the other private 

 privileges, aud that no other explanation was possible ; that, therefore, 

 in Galicia, in public as well as in private waters, the actual possession, 

 based on many different titles, should be recognized before the law as 

 the only valid one. In this sense, the ministry of finance, in its decree of 

 June 19, 1865, Z. 2711, directed the provincial finance-office at Lemberg 

 not to enforce an exclusive fishing-privilege of the state in the rivers 

 of Galicia, and that matters in this respect should remain in statu quo 

 till otherwise regulated by some new law. 



The reports of former Galician officials and of the Galician agri- 

 cultural societies faithfully depict the chaotic state of the fishing-laws, 

 which, in many parts of the province, had almost entirely exhausted this 

 source of national wealth, and had seriously injured the salmon and 

 sturgeon fisheries in the Galician rivers, which had formerly been very 

 extensive. In some districts, the fisheries are carried on by the land- 

 owners ; in others, they are managed by the village-communities as the 

 common property thereof, and the revenues derived from them are used 

 for meeting the common expenditure ; while, in other parts, they are 

 the independent property of private individuals. 



One of the reporters writes : "The lower classes consider fishing in 

 rivers and streams as belonging to nobody ; at every season of the year, 

 people practice it in the most reckless manner, and the privileges of 

 other persons are entirely disregarded, since they are in no wise pro- 

 tected. The disorder exceeds all bounds ; the most injurious methods 

 of fishing are freely employed; and, contrary to common sense and law, 

 the fishing in the rivers is carried on in such a manner as to hasten its 

 entire destruction." 



In Bukoicina, which, since its incorporation into the Austrian mon- 

 archy, has been treated like Galicia, even in matters concerning which 

 formerly a difference had existed, the condition of affairs has been very 

 much the same. 



Bukowina has, in proportion to its area, the largest number of rivers 



