SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 109 



principle of the level of the tide, only rendering it more ridicu- 

 lous by applying it to the bottom instead of the surface of the 

 water (perhaps on the ground that truth lies at the bottom of 

 the well), in order, as he expresses it, " to ascertain the point 

 at which the level of the sea touches the land under the super- 

 stratum of fresh or drainage water ; " and, upon this principle, 

 which he assures the Court proved quite satisfactory in the 

 Thames and the Dee, in proving both rivers to be the SEA, he 

 declares the part in question, where he admits the water to be 

 quite fresh above, and only brackish at the bottom, to be the SEA !* 

 Having settled this point so satisfactorily, and in a way so con- 

 sonant with science, if not with common sense, he next tells 

 the Court that he has farther discovered, that " the waters of 

 the frith obey the same general law which regulates the ocean, 

 being thereby affected in their flux and reflux ;" in other words, 

 that the tide ebbs and flows there just as it does elsewhere. 



We were anxious to. see how these great discoveries, which 

 were to remove the puzzles of the judges and settle the distracted 

 rights of parties in all time coming, would be received by the 

 Court and no doubt the discoverer was just as anxious himself 

 to witness his triumph, and to receive the compliments of the 

 Court on the occasion. Unfortunately the matter came before 

 an Ordinary, qui en savait plus que lui the Lord Moncreiff, 

 whose superior mind saw through the whole juggle at once 

 and who treated the superstratum of drainage water and the 

 fresh-wake? sea with utter contempt ; but it was paid for. It 

 is a common practice with the Court of Session to make remits 

 of this kind to men, whose reports, not being made on oath, can 

 be of no value, or have any other effect than to increase expense 

 upon litigants. We have seen many such remits to land- 

 surveyors, agriculturists, and dabblers in science, but we have 

 never seen one where the business was not, to all appearance, 

 jobbed. 



In the Cromarty Frith stake-nets are still in their full glory^ 

 and the rivers nearly useless. In the river Alness, which dis- 

 charges itself into that frith, and where, of yore, dozens of 

 salmon might be angled in a forenoon, scarcely a fish is now to 



* .This is exactly the case in the Thames at Woolwich, 



