DEESIDE FOTTINGS. 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 her 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, 
