8o MUSSEL CULTURE 



purpose of averting the ruination of the scalps. 

 White-fish fishing continues to be held by the 

 Crown in trust for the people ; but the right of 

 taking mussels, oysters, and other shell-fish, as 

 well as the title to the soil on which the shell-fish 

 congregate, is, in Scotland, part of the patrmionium 

 principis, or hereditary revenues of the Crown. 

 The right of fishing and the title to the soil are 

 both therefore alienable by Crown grant. The 

 case of The Duchess of Sutherland v. Watson 

 and Others'^ (loth January 1868), to which 

 reference has already been made in Chapter II., 

 established this point. Mr. A. Asher, O.C., in 

 his evidence before the Mussel Commission,- 

 refers to the case in question as follows : ' The 

 Duchess of Sutherland, as grantee of the Crown, 

 has an exclusive right of property in the mussel 

 scalps within the grant, whether these mussel 

 scalps are situated in the foreshore or in deep 

 water beyond the foreshore, but, of course, within 

 the territorial waters.' Later, he also says : ' A 

 survey of the development and progress of the law 

 on this subject appears to me to show that the right 

 of mussel-fishing, which was originally regarded 



1 6 Macph. 199. 



^ Rep07't of the Mussel and Bait Beds Com?/iissioji, 1889, p. 153. 



