90 SCOTCH SALMON AND SCOTCH LAW. 



very imperfectly developed ; that the laws which regu- 

 late them are often absurd, and endless causes of ruin- 

 ous litigation ; and that in this country there is, perhaps, 

 no department of human industry more in need of 

 enlightened legislation than that connected with the 

 British Fisheries. Of all this, and especially of the 

 unsatisfactory state of the law, the work of the late Mr 

 Mackenzie of Ardross and Dundonnell supplies many 

 remarkable illustrations. The work altogether is some- 

 thing out of the common, both from the circumstances 

 which called it forth, and from, to use a favourite phrase 

 of the author, its piquant style. Mr Mackenzie, pro- 

 prietor of the river Shinri in Sutherlandshire, and ten- 

 ant or tacksman of nearly the whole of the four salmon 

 rivers which combine to form the Frith of Dornoch, was 

 forced to raise an action against Houston, possessor of 

 some land called Creich, in the estuary, for intercepting 

 the salmon proceeding to the rivers, at a part where the 

 channel of the estuary, at low water, was one-third less 

 in breadth than the Thames at Westminster Bridge, 

 without having either a crown grant, or, it is alleged, 

 any right whatever, authorising him so to do. The 

 singular result was, that the Court of Session, on pre- 

 cisely the same point, gave two judgments directly in 

 the teeth of each other. The latter of these being 

 against Mr Mackenzie, he appealed to the House of 

 Lords, which decided against him on the technical 

 ground that he had averred no right of property at the 

 spot where Houston fished ; no heed being apparently 

 given to the strong point in his case, namely, that the 

 fish, intercepted by Houston at this particular spot, 

 were all on their way up to the waters possessed by the 

 appellant. As this judgment was given in 1831, and as 

 a considerable portion of the book is occupied with 

 very caustic and intelligent comments on Mr Kennedy's 

 Committee, which reported on the Salmon Fisheries of 

 Scotland so far back as 1824, it may be thought that 

 the present proprietor of Ardross might as well have 



