SALMON -FISHEEY OP SCOTLAND. 67 



good reason why our judges should view the rights of the pro- 

 prietors of the rivers in the same light as if salmon were like 

 haddocks, any more than they would view the rights of pro- 

 perty of the owners of dove-cots, as if the pigeons which 

 belonged to them were like larks or thrushes ; or why they 

 should suppose the Crown had a right to impose servitudes on 

 the one more than on the other ; or argue about animals as if 

 they were different from what they really are — of salmon as if 

 they were like haddocks, or of pigeons as if they were like 

 larks ; in short, why they should prefer a wrong principle to 

 the right one, — ^the unnatural to the natural— the principle of 

 error to that of truth and common sense. 



It is then, as we said, clear that, after the Crown granted 

 away the salmon-rivers, the rights of the Crown were exhausted, 

 and that the Crown had no more right in salmon, and no more 

 salmon to give, without taking away what it had already given, 

 and had become the vested rights of the grantees, any more 

 than the Crown, after having given away all the dove-cots in 

 the kingdom, with their pigeons, could have more pigeons to 

 give away, except by taking away those it had already given ; 

 or than a man, who had sold or given away all his sheep-farms 

 with their sheep, could still have a right to those sheep, or to 

 dispose of them to others, after he had parted with his right to 

 them. In a recent question in the Court of Appeal, the judge 

 put the case, whether, if the Crown had only granted ten fur- 

 longs or ten yards of the fishings of a river, the Crown would 

 be thereby precluded from granting the rest of the river ? We 

 do not think this is exactly in point to the right of the Crown 

 to grant servitudes to the coast heritors to intercept the salmon 

 proceeding to the rivers. How the river fishings were origin- 

 ally granted, whether in detached parts, or as a whole, which 

 was afterwards sold in detached parts by the original grantees, 

 cannot at this distance of time be traced ; but the fact that 

 the whole of the fisheries in all the salmon-rivers in Scotland 

 have, under the existing grants, 'b&eu possessed for ages, is beyond 

 all dispute ; so that the case put by his Lordship becomes a 

 mere speculative one, which can have no existence in fact. 

 We shall put the same case to his Lordship m another shape : 



