150 SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 



salmon themselves by stealth even when heavy in spawn, for 

 their amusement, or bribe the river-keepers to allow them and 

 their friends to do so ; and if a poacher sent them a present of 

 stolen fish, they would not receive it ; but these generous, 

 high-souled, disinterested gentlemen, the very pinks of the 

 Scotch magistracy, and of the Hidalgo race in the North, may 

 be occasionally absent from the country, or too much engaged 

 in their own affairs, to attend to the interest of others, and 

 then the rivers would be left to their fate. The best protec- 

 tion of the fishery is to prevent the means of its abuse. Even 

 the amusement of the land owners themselves would be pro- 

 moted by it ; for though a proprietor might be able to preserve 

 his own side of a river, as all the pools are accessible from the 

 opposite bank, he would not be a bit the better for it ; whereas, 

 under the general check of the owners of the salmon-fishery, 

 none would be allowed to approach the river but persons of 

 respectability. 



It being, therefore, as we have said, a matter of considerable 

 importance to the individual owners of the fishery, as well as 

 to the salmon-fishery itself, as regards the public, all over Scot- 

 land, which depends so much on the protection of the rivers, 

 to shut out as much as possible all access to poaching under a 

 general system of trout-angling, we shall take a glance at the 

 rights of parties as regards the law on the subject. 



We have already remarked, that it is admitted by all lawyers 

 that the first principle of the feudal law is, that the Sovereign 

 is the original proprietor of all the lands and rivers in the 

 kingdom, which, like any other proprietor to which the whole 

 might belong, he might parcel out as he pleased. He might 

 give a land estate to one man, the adjacent river to another, 

 and the salmon-fishery of the river, if he chose, to a third, each 

 having a right just to what he got, and no more. All this, we 

 believe, no lawyer will dispute. It follows, then, that when a 

 land estate has been granted, the grantee has a right to all that 

 is within the bounds of the estate or grant, but nothing further : 

 he can acquire no right beyond that, save by prescription. If 

 the estate be bounded by a river, the water edge is necessarily 

 the march. There the lands end, and with the lands his right. 



