" PRO BONO PUBLICO." 103 



something may be said in favour of a proprietor's right 

 to catch salmon in the sea which bounds his property. 

 If they do not belong to him naturally if no law can 

 give him a right to catch them the sea, by this mode 

 of reasoning, is the private fish-pond to be specially 

 reserved for the use of river proprietors, that salmon 

 may therein grow fat, and not a fin of them be harmed 

 till they choose to return to their native rivers. If 

 salmon are bred in rivers, it is certain that their growth 

 is in the feeding-grounds of the ocean ; and most people 

 will conclude that, to catch them there, when they are 

 in the finest condition, must be pro bono publico, even 

 though it may somewhat interfere with the profits of 

 river proprietors. If Mr Mackenzie had sent to market 

 a fat bullock reared at Ardross, he would, we presume, 

 have been wrathful exceedingly if a neighbouring laird 

 had claimed the sole property in the animal because it 

 had been calved on his land. If rivers supply salmon 

 with nurseries, no sane man should jump to the conclu- 

 sion that, therefore, they must never be caught in the 

 sea, where alone they attain that adipose maturity 

 which makes them worth the catching. 



Our disappointed litigant treats of the "Eights of 

 Parties" but in such hot blood that, to his disordered 

 vision, there is but one party the proprietor of a river- 

 fishing. The really valuable part of his book is not 

 that on rights of parties, but that on which he com- 

 ments on Scottish statutes. We think it demonstrated 

 that our old Scottish laws anent salmon-fisheries were 

 infinitely more intelligible, more just, and more for the 

 public advantage, than those decisions which regulate, 

 or rather perplex, this department of our social economy. 

 The courts of law nowadays seem to suppose that, un- 

 less stake-nets be planted in an estuary, or in the 

 vicinity of a river, they can do little harm to the salmon. 

 Moreover, though these fixed nets have been declared 

 illegal in the Tay, this has not been followed by the 

 removal of these destructive engines from all the estu- 



