84 THE BOEDER ANGLER. 



of water between Rutherford and Kelso, a distance of 

 about five miles, w^hich is open to the public or rather, 

 which has not been seized upon, and an exclusive pri- 

 vate right, in defiance of the public, asserted by force 

 of gamekeepers. Thirty years ago, there was not 

 an inch of it that was not free, and the preserving 

 practice, which is now very rigid, was carefully and 

 insidiously begun. People, under the shadow of Floors 

 Castle, were induced to take written permissions; gra- 

 dually it came to be known that anybody who fished 

 in Floors water was expected to ask leave, while it 

 was understood that nobody who asked would be re- 

 fused ; and finally, within the last ten or fifteen years, 

 what young men can remember as perfectly open to 

 all, came to be obtainable only by special favour of 

 the Duke of Roxburghe or his Chamberlain. We do 

 not know whether leave is at all liberally issued by 

 his Grace or not, and we can easily understand how 

 a keen angler, through whose possessions the Tweed 

 flows as if it were part of them, should desire to have 

 it exclusively to himself; but we confess that we are 

 radical enough to think that the ducal owner of Floors, 

 and of the rich and beautiful domain that surrounds it, 

 ought to have been satisfied with what he had, without 

 attempting to rob the public of almost the only privi- 

 lege that now belongs to it that of angling for trout 

 in royal rivers. 



TheMakerstoun-water succeeds Rutherford; and here, 

 at the Trows, a famous Tweed fisherman, Rob Kerss, 

 used to hold sway as lessee from Sir T. Macdougall 

 Brisbane. Here, under Rob's guidance, many of the 

 present Tweed salmon-fishers learned the art. Ma- 



