AN ANGLER'S RAMBLES 



application to flumina on a different footing and of a larger class, 

 of which there are several in Scotland. 



Were the principles of the Civil or Roman law, which in this 

 judgment led to the separation of a public right of way acquired 

 by prescription from its presumed corollary (for in that light, up 

 to the date of its deliverance, the right of angling appears to 

 have been viewed), were these principles brought to bear in 

 assorting or classifying our rivers, the result, there is little doubt, 

 would be the legal recognition of a number of them as navigable 

 or public, and in this capacity they would admit the community 

 to the enjoyment of certain privileges in connexion with them, 

 that of angling for river-trout among others. Construed by these 

 principles, all rivers on which Crown charters have been granted, 

 conferring a right of salmon-fishings cum nave et rete, so far up 

 as such charters extend, would fall under this class. The dis- 

 tribution of such charters, conferring in many instances a right 

 of salmon -fishings, irrespective of any title in the lands or alveus 

 over which it may be exercised, favours the conclusion arrived 

 at. I am, perhaps, stretching the point too far. All that I in- 

 tended to say was, that it would certainly give satisfaction to the 

 angling community in Scotland to have their interests, if they 

 possess any at all beyond what mere sufferance apportions to 

 them, properly defined. Within my recollection, and in our 

 own day, hundreds of miles of river and lake margin, over which 

 the fair rod-fisher, from time immemorial, plied his solitary art 

 unquestioned, have been placed in a state of conservation, to 

 the benefit and encouragement, in too many instances, of the 

 poachers alone. 



Of the Tyne, which, by its contiguity to Edinburgh, is rendered 

 important in the eye of the urbane angler, the late Sir Thomas 

 Dick Lauder, in one or more of the sunny numbers of TaiCs 

 Magazine, gives an interesting account ; its claims as a trouting 

 stream receiving from his able pen all the consideration they are 



