DEESIDE JOTTINGS. 219 



duced all perhaps below their natural standard of 

 productiveness. Public and private rights were, in 

 the first instance, established without sufficient 

 counter-checks to secure the objects for which the 

 rights themselves were granted. As sometimes hap- 

 pens in mechanics, an excess of power operating un- 

 controlled destroyed the working equilibrium of the 

 machinery, and defeated the very purposes for which 

 it was contrived. The effects of such power, without 

 a " governor" to moderate its action, were felt all the 

 more fatally as they fell upon animal life, the laws of 

 which are never violated with impunity. The 

 bounties of Nature are freely and liberally dispensed ; 

 but are not inexhaustible, or proof against outrage. 

 If drawn upon beyond Jier reproductive capacities, 

 she soon avenges the infraction of her code, and 

 ceases to bestow her treasures on savage or civilised 

 man. 



The course of the fine river which suggests these 

 remarks is estimated in round numbers at a hundred 

 miles. The variety and extent of its feeding and 

 breeding ground are patent to the humblest con- 

 noisseur in pisciculture ; and unlike most of our rivers 

 of the same volume, its lower reaches are undis- 

 turbed by navigation, with the exception of light 

 fishing and passage boats, and an occasional " flat " 

 at tide-time. 



At no point of the stream are its waters, I believe, 



