of the Fishery Board for Scotland. 



of Galloway on the north to Hodbarrow Point on the south, which line 

 is seventy miles in length, and almost touches the Isle of Man. This 

 last-mentioned line, while it avoids the anomaly in the Solway Act, of 

 having a firth consisting of 145 miles in length of sea-coast only, with no 

 interior to its margin, adds 1034 square miles of sea to what was the 

 area of the largest limits of the said arm of the sea as defined by the 

 Solway Act. 



The Home Secretary altered the bye-law as proposed by Messrs 

 Ffennell and Leslie, and adopted the proposal of Mr Eden, but because 

 Messrs Ffennell and Leslie had signed our proposed bye-law, their names 

 were appended to another which was totally different, and which they 

 thought very objectionable and unreasonable, while the name of Mr 

 Eden was not put to it, although he was its author. 



The limits of the Solway Firth, as they stand, form exactly a parallel 

 case to what the Firth of Forth would be if it were made to extend from 

 Berwick to Montrose, thereby taking in the Firth of Tay ; as the Solway 

 is made to take in Luce and Wigtown Bays, and a great extent of the 

 coasts both of England and Scotland, not looking towards each other, but 

 towards Ireland. There may be good reason for putting two coasts, which 

 face each other, and are geographically within the same Firth, under the 

 same law, but there can be no reason for applying English law to portions 

 of Scotland, varying from twenty-five to fifty-five miles in distance from 

 the nearest part of England, and not facing any part of it. 



The present Scotch Salmon Fishery Commissioners are all decidedly 

 of opinion that the limits of the Solway Firth ought to be restricted to a 

 line drawn from Ross Head Lighthouse to St Bees Lighthouse, including 

 the middle of the Firth as well as its margins. An explanatory map 

 accompanies this note.* 



Edinburgh, 3rd April 1868. 



* This map will be found opposite page 79 of the Appendix to the Report of 1871, 

 by Mr Buckland and myself, on the effect of recent legislation on the Salmon 

 Fisheries in Scotland, and also opposite page 21 of the Appendix to the Report of 

 1881, by Mr Spencer Walpolc and myself, on the Laws affecting the Salmon Fisheries 

 of the Solway Firth . 



