STAKE-NETS. 95 



as they had been granted out to the Crown vassals by 

 charter. This decision, it may easily be conceived, 

 has excited much trepidation along all our shores, and 

 has caused many a search after the now indispensable 

 charter. It is also reasonably inferred that the Crown 

 will not permit this noble heritage to lie waste, but 

 that it will stimulate salmon-fishing on the coast, by 

 granting charters for a consideration, the amount of 

 which may largely swell the public revenues. Sup- 

 posing this course to be followed, the question of stake- 

 net fishing must be reconsidered in all its varied bear- 

 ings upon the rights of individuals, and upon the 

 interests of the public. Is it legal? Judging from 

 the celebrated Tay case, about which there was such 

 fierce contention for twenty years, many a lawyer will 

 feather his nest before that question be judicially an- 

 swered. And then the contradictory statements of 

 those professing to be familiar with the natural history 

 of the salmon ! Some, like our author, aver most truly, 

 we think, that he is a river fish, migratory and grega- 

 rious ; a true Highlander, born amid the mountains, but 

 who, like other Highlanders, goes to forage elsewhere. 

 Others, like Dr Fleming, insist that he is a sea fish, 

 because, during the period of his migration, he is a 

 dweller in the ocean. On this principle a youth born 

 in Scotland, but going to push his fortune in the wider 

 and more fertile field of " merry England," which he 

 forsook as soon as he had made himself " comfortable," 

 should be reckoned an Englishman. 



But the fiercest conflict will be between the opposing 

 interests of the fishing proprietors on the coast and the 

 proprietors of salmon rivers. It must be owned that a 

 maritime proprietor, with the sea at his door as his 

 huge fish-pond, is grievously tempted to avail himself 

 of the stake-net as the readiest method of capturing 

 multitudes of coveted salmon. But the natural history 

 of the fish, arid the rights of river proprietors, demand 

 that the owners of maritime fishings shall not be per- 



