106 &4LM0N-FISHEEY OF SCOTLAND. 



that his mountain stream, which discharged itself into a lake, 

 did not end with its channel or banks, hut extended half way 

 into the lake — or in other words, that half the lake was the 

 mountain stream, and the other half a quite different water : he 

 might, perhaps, admire such exalted notions, as he would the 

 reveries and tourbillons of Descartes — or he might, perhaps, take 

 to his heels, thinking he was in unsafe company ; but as to the 

 actual possibility of the thing, it would never once enter into 

 his head, or we believe into any heads save those of learned 

 men, so brimful of legal lore, and so mystified with legal niceties 

 and subtleties, as to be unable to distinguish sense from nonsense. 



It is true friths differ from lakes in the quality of the water, 

 but that nowise mends the matter. Friths are, in fact, bodies 

 of mixed yrater, composed of the freshwater of the rivers flowing 

 in at the one extremity, and of sea water flowiug in vnth 

 the tide at the other, — both blended together by such imper- 

 ceptible degrees, by the constant action of the tide, that all the 

 chemical knowledge of a Sir H. Davy would be unable to draw 

 a line of distinction between them, or to say at what precise 

 part all above could be called a river or fresh water, and all 

 below the sea. Besides, even were it practicable to fix upon 

 such a line, which it evidently is not, it would vary with every 

 flood in the rivers, so that what would be declared to be the 

 sea in the morning, might be the river in the afternoon. 



It is, therefore, clear, that if we admit any parts of a frith to 

 be a river, in the extended sense of the word as used by other 

 nations, though not in the Scotch sense, they must include the 

 whole of the frith to the fauces terrce, since no inteemediate 

 line of distinction can be drawn. In truth, the fauces terrce, or 

 local boundaries, are the natural boundaries of all waters. It 

 may be the same water which flows out of a river into a mill- 

 race, or into a canal ; it is the locality alone that makes the 

 difference. An eminent quibbler in the Tay Case, which, as 

 we have said, was a mere mass of quibbles from one end to 

 the other, argued that "the frith being, he said, the sea, it 

 would be unmeaning tautology to maintain that the sea flowed 

 into itself" He might have added, that a river, which flows 

 out of a lake, being the same water, it would be nonsense to 



