110 SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 



be seen. The water of this frith is some shades salter than in 

 the adjacent friths, and this circumstance is deemed legally 

 sufficient, it is alleged, to deprive the rivers in this estuary of 

 the protection of the statutes, as if the quality of the water 

 could defeat the claims of justice, or remove all protection from 

 property. If the fauces tefrce are the natural boundaries of 

 friths, as of rivers, there is no frith in Scotland better denned 

 than the frith of Cromarty : but it is said the lay is so fine, 

 and the anchorage so good, that the whole British Navy might 

 ride there with safety and this was brought forward as an in- 

 vincible, and, we believe, a successful argument, to show that 

 it was not a water where the tide ebbed and flowed, or where 

 fry of any kind could be destroyed, in the words of the statutes. 

 The argument was doubtless quite unanswerable. But any 

 argument, whether in point or not, will serve the purpose, 

 where delay is wanted ; and the worse the argument, in general 

 the more effectual it seems to be in law. 



In the Inverness Frith a stake-net has been condemned by 

 the Court as illegal, at Eedcastle, within a few miles of the 

 river Beauly ; while another stake-net at Culloden, still nearer 

 to the river Ness, and therefore, according to the ideas of the 

 Court with regard to the statutes, still more illegal, has been 

 found to be directly the reverse, and has continued regularly at 

 work, intercepting the fish of both rivers. In short, no man 

 can know where an engine is illegal, or where it is not. No 

 man can call his fishing property his own or be sure, for one 

 hour, that a fixed engine may not be run out immediately in 

 front of it, and extinguish it at a stroke. Such is the state of 

 the salmon-fishery at present ; and if the sufferers look for 

 redress the redress of the dice-box it is the merest chance 

 that it will be even ultimately obtained, after years of litiga- 

 tion, while the expense, quite ruinous, is certain. In a case 

 now under the consideration of the Court from the same frith,, 

 an issue has been sent to a jury to try, whether an engine, 

 placed about midway between the illegal stake-net at Eedcastle 

 and the legal one at Culloden, is in a river or in the sea ? The 

 engine is in mixed water between the river Beauly and the 

 river Ness, and at many miles distance from the sea. It is 



