SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 105 



and substituted a novel law in their room, which is declared to 

 be law. The statutes prohibit yairs in waters, generally, where 

 the tide ebbs and flows and the new law restricts this to 

 rivers or fresh waters ; the next point was, therefore, to define 

 the rivers or parts to which this new law was to apply : but 

 this has not been done, during even the quarter of a century 

 which has elapsed since the new law was declared ; so that the 

 matter remains, as we have said, still involved as much in 

 darkness and confusion as ever. We are told the prohibition 

 of fixed engines is confined to rivers to fresh waters ; but 

 what those rivers or fresh waters are, or whether they include 

 the whole, or only a part, or what part, of friths or estuaries, 

 we are still as ignorant of as the child unborn. 



By the usage of Scotland, as we have remarked, rivers mean 

 just what is termed the river proper, or body of fresh water 

 contained within its own channel and banks, and before it falls 

 within the shores or local boundaries of a frith or the sea. 

 But the new lawgivers, though clinging still to the word river, 

 which is never once mentioned in the prohibitory clause of the 

 statutes, seem to be aware of the absurdity of restricting the 

 prohibition to the rivers proper, and appear therefore disposed 

 to extend them more or less into the friths, and to consider a 

 part of the friths as fresh-water rivers, and the rest as the sea, 

 sweeping the useful denomination of Friths entirely from 

 the map of the country, and dividing them between the Kivers 

 and the Sea. The difficulty, however, was how to do so, or by 

 what means, without the aid of the magical rod of Moses, to 

 divide a frith, as he divided the Eed Sea, into two parts, the 

 one to be considered a /res/i-water river, the other the pure 

 unadulterated salt sea ? This was a point quite sufficient to ex- 

 ercise wisdom, if wisdom could condescend to bestow a thought 

 upon the matter. The lawgivers were undoubtedly sadly 

 puzzled to extricate themselves out of this dilemma, into which 

 their absurd construction of the statutes had led them, and 

 which they could discover no principle to support. If, however, 

 they could not make the division de facto, they did it in idea, 

 and made the application de facto. How a rustic, or other un- 

 sophisticated son of nature, would stare, if he were gravely told 



