SALMON-FISHEEY OP fiCOTLAKD. 107 



say that the river is not the lake. Salt water from the sea 

 flows with the tide into aU the great rivers in the world ; but 

 no man ever thought of calling those rivers the sea on that 

 account. That was an absurdity reserved for the Scotch Law. 

 When water flows from one body within the local or natural 

 boundaries of another body of water, it becomes, necessarily, a 

 part thereof. If salt water alone, without extent, constituted 

 the sea, a horse-pond might be filled with it, and be called the 

 sea. But friths, as before remarked are bodies ip&r se, composed 

 of mixed water, which are neither fresh-water rivers on the one 

 hand, or the sea on the other ; though in the Tay Case they 

 were sometimes called the one, and sometimes the other ; and 

 sometimes both, just as it suited parties to state. 



In that celebrated Case, the Court being greatly puzzled 

 where to draw a line of demarcation between the river and the 

 sea, across the frith, in order to divide the waters above from 

 the waters below ; and not knowing how to act, in the dUemma 

 into which they had brought themselves, a scientific gentleman 

 who, had been philosophising and taking levels in the estuary, 

 appeared upon the scene, and stated to the Court, that the proper 

 criterion for fixing the termination of all rivers was the tide, 

 that is, that a river terminates, not with its banks, or with the 

 fauces terrce of the frith — but exactly in that precise part, 

 WITHIN THE FRITH, where the medium tide is always either 

 ebbing or flowing. Here, then, was a principle just such as 

 the Court wanted, for dividing a frith into two parts, without 

 the aid of the magical rod of Moses, and for showing the ter- 

 mination of one body of water udthin another, by a power 

 which acts upon both indiscriminately. The principle having 

 the merit of novelty, and above all of science, was hailed in the 

 Parliament House with universal applause. It was grand, and 

 was not adopted, only because it was supposed to have been 

 unknown to the mere common-sense legislators by whom the 

 statutes were framed. It is quite obvious that the tide must 

 flow, up all rivers, more or less, just according to the depth of 

 their channels and the levelness of the ground. It flows up 

 the Thames to Eichmond — and we believe the medium low- 

 water mark is somewhere about Putney ; so that, according to 



