THE FISHERY LAWS. 



FISHING takes place either at sea or in rivers or other 

 inland waters. We may thus divide it into sea-fishing and 

 freshwater fishing, though not with strict accuracy of 

 language, as in the latter term we shall have to include 

 fishing in tidal rivers, estuaries, and arms of the sea. There 

 is a wide difference, as everybody knows, between the two 

 kinds of fishing as to their methods and apparatus. The 

 difference is hardly less striking to an Englishman who 

 contemplates them from the legal point of view. Fresh- 

 water fisheries are subject to a number -of regulations, partly 

 general and partly local, which go into considerable detail, 

 and are not wholly free from obscurity. These regulations 

 are created by Acts of Parliament, or made by persons 

 on whom Parliament has conferred authority for that 

 purpose, and they are naturally a matter of internal or, as we 

 say in technical language, municipal government and juris- 

 diction. Foreign Powers have nothing to do with them. 

 Sea fisheries, on the other hand, are now but little affected 

 by any purely municipal law or legislation. Whales and 

 sturgeon, and, some books say, other " great fish " caught in 

 English waters belong by ancient prerogative to the Crowa 

 In Scotland the herring fishery has been fostered and 

 regulated by statutes, of which, however, only a very small 

 part remains in force. British subjects fishing in certain 

 parts of the high seas may come under the operation of 



