of the Fishery Board for Scotland, 



111 



1 breadth, pointing northward from high- water mark down to a 

 ' place called Hodbarrow Point, in the parish of Millam, in the said 

 ' county of Cumberland ; and likewise, for the sole purposes of this 

 ' Act, and no other, the limits of the mouth or entrance of the river 

 ' Nith, situate in the county of Dumfries aforesaid, shall for the 

 1 future be deemed and taken to be and extend from the large house 

 ' at Carsethorn of Arbigland aforesaid, in a line across the said river 

 ' Nith due east.' Lastly, ' The Salmon Fisheries (Scotland) Act, 

 ' 1862/ empowered the Commissioners (sect. 6, clause 2) 'to fix 

 ' for the purposes of this Act the limits of the Solway Firth, having 

 ' regard to an Act passed in the 44th year of the reign of His 

 ' Majesty King George the Third, chapter 45 ;' and the Commis- 

 sioners, by their bye-law, which took effect from 9th April 1864, 

 fixed the limit dividing the Solway Firth from the sea ' to be a 

 ' straight line drawn from the Mull of Galloway in the county of 

 ' Wigtown, to Hodbarrow Point in the parish of Millam in the county 

 * of Cumberland.'* Within the estuary line thus defined, the Com- 

 missioners fixed a number of other estuary lines, such as those of 

 the Luce, the Cree, Fleet, and Bladenoch, the Dee, the Urr, and the 

 Nith, Annan, and Esk. In the case of Johnston v. Mackenzie and 

 Others, already referred to, the estuary line fixed by the Commis- 

 sioners for the three last-named rivers has been found quite ineffec- 

 tual to exclude fixed engines, and indeed the object of fixing such 

 lines within the ' Water of Solway ' seems somewhat difficult 

 to discover. In other parts of Scotland their purpose is obvious. 

 They effect what was formerly only determined by a jury trial — 

 the marking out of the boundary within which fixed engines are 

 illegal under the old statutes. But the estuary lines of rivers 

 flowing into the ' Water of Solway ' cannot have this effect, as 

 these waters are exempted from the prohibition against fixed 

 engines. Of course, if fixed engines, at or near the mouth of any 

 of these rivers where the tide ebbs and flows, can be shown not to 

 be within the ' Water of the Solway,' the exemption of the old 

 statutes cannot protect them, and they may be put down. But 

 whether they are or are not in such a situation is a question for 

 the Court to determine, and the estuary lines of the Commissioners 

 appear to be of little use for this purpose. 



In Scotland, generally, at this moment, it is only the operation 

 of the old Scottish statutes, and the decisions following upon them, 

 that make the use of fixed engines in estuaries illegal. But these 

 old statutes did not apply to the Solway Firth. It was spe- 

 cially exempted, and for the very evident reason that, at the time 

 when they were framed, England and Scotland were frequently at 

 war, and it was of no use enforcing on the Scottish side restrictions 

 which could not also be enforced on the English, and which, even 

 on the Scottish side, might at any time be broken through by 

 English invaders. It may be said that times have changed, that 

 the two countries have been long at peace, and that there is now 

 no reason for making the estuaries of the Solway rivers an excep- 

 tion to the rules enforced in the other estuaries in Scotland. This 



* With regard to the bye-law fixing this limit, see 'Explanatory Note' by Mr 

 Leslie, C.E., one of the Commissioners, Appendix No. V. 



