SALMON LEGISLA TION IN SCOTLAND. 501 



to forgive the government of the day for having been for 

 so long a time so culpably neglectful of the important 

 interests at stake in Scotland. Even now the establish- 

 ment of the office of Inspector is not on so liberal a scale 

 as in England, notwithstanding the threefold value of the 

 fishings, though nominally one inspector has been recently 

 withdrawn. We should like to see one or two additions 

 made to the powers of the inspector, but remarks as to 

 these may come in more fitly under suggestions for im- 

 provement of the law. 



ABOLITION OF FIXED ENGINES IN ESTUARIES. 



The abolition of " fixed engines " (except cruives) in the 

 estuaries of rivers is undoubtedly one of the most im- 

 portant benefits secured by the Act of 1862. It might 

 have been thought that there was no doubt of the illegality 

 of such engines in estuaries by virtue of the stringent pro- 

 hibitions in the old Scottish statutes against fixed engines 

 in waters " where the sea ebbs and flows," and of the legal 

 decisions which in several instances have followed on these. 

 They had also been declared illegal by several modern 

 statutes, though not general ones, in the Tweed Act 

 among others. The stake and bag net fishers, however, 

 took advantage of the fact that it was nowhere laid down 

 what were the limits of the estuaries, and consequently in 

 the absence of any hard and fast definition of what was 

 estuary and what was sea, they put their own interpretation 

 upon the law, and gradually advanced as far as they dared 

 into the estuaries under the pretence that they were still in 

 the sea. There could be but one result of this, viz., that 

 scarcely a fish was allowed to pass up the streams to the 

 spawning grounds, and year by year the evil effect of this 



