SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND, 97 



repealing former statutes, but never before of one which annul- 

 led those which came after it. It is singular, that though the 

 clause in this statute, owing to the error we have stated, is, as 

 we have said, absolute nonsense, upon which it would be just 

 as great nonsense to say that law can be founded, and upon 

 which no court on earth, composed of men of common sense, 

 would indeed attempt to found law, the Court of Session clung 

 to this statute and founded upon it more than upon all the 

 others so congenial was it to practice, which can extract good 

 Scotch law even out of nonsense itself. 



Some have tried to explain the clause, by saying that the 

 word fresh in the one part meant the lower part of the river, 

 and in the other the higher ; but this nowise mends the matter, 

 for in no part of fresh water could yairs be erected, and in no 

 parts of them are the fry of sea fishes, or of all fishes, to be 

 found. The Act, with the word " fresche " in the prohibitory 

 clause, will be nonsense in any way in which they can dispose 

 of it 'such thorough nonsense, that no set of men who know 

 principles would waste their time, or allow their understand- 

 ings to be so muddled with quibbles and sophisms as to 

 attempt to extract law out of it, or who would be so insensible 

 to the claims of justice as to dispose by it of the properties of 

 individuals every day, in a course of litigation which they can- 

 not but see must be ruinous to all involved in it. 



It is needless to follow the statutes minutely any farther, the 

 whole of them being of the same uniform import. The statute 

 1469 prohibits prynnes or narrow masses set in rivers that 

 have their course to the sea, or set within flood-mark of the sea, 

 meaning thereby, as stated in the Court of Session, the mouth 

 of a fresh-water river. 



The statute 1488 ordains that all yairs and fish-dams that 

 are in salt water, where the sea (tide) ebbs and flows, be 

 utterly destroyed, as well those that pertain to our Sovereign 

 Lord, as all others throughout the realm ; and that cruives set 

 in fresh water be made according to law. It will be observed 

 that, while the words of this Act furnish additional proof that 

 the word " fresche" in the prohibitory clause of the Act 1424 

 was an error, as we have said, they expressly show that it 



G 



