xviii 
Report on Salmon Fisheries. 
' not " Rivers " in the plural, as it ought to have been, they have 
' no jurisdiction over the Eden. 
* So completely was this understood and admitted to be the 
' case — though the point has never been brought before a court of 
* law and adjudicated upon — that, in 1871, the late Mr Maitland 
* Heriot of Ramornie, Sheriff of Forfar, and other proprietors on the 
' Eden, drew up a petition to the Home Secretary, praying to have 
' the Eden erected into a separate Fishery District ; and, by the 
' direction of the Home Secretary, the Commissioners of Scotch 
' Salmon Fisheries — of whom I was one — held an inquiry at St 
' Andrews with the view of having the prayer of this petition given 
* effect to. The formation of the Eden into a separate Fishery 
' District was, indeed, successfully resisted, chiefly by the Burgh of 
' Cupar. But it was never attempted to be maintained that the 
' Eden was already within the jurisdiction of the Tay District 
' Board. 
* The River Forth. 
' Having been directed by the Fishery Board to inspect the River 
' Tyne, which falls into the sea at Tyninghame in East Lothian, I 
' inspected that river on the 24th and 25th of last month. But, 
' on carefully reading over the Bye-law constituting the District of 
' the Forth, I found that the Tyne, the Midlothian Esk, and the 
* Almond, on the south shore of the Firth of Forth, and the Leven 
' on the north shore, are in precisely the same position with regard 
* to the Forth District Board as the Eden is with regard to 
' the Tay District Board. 
* By the Bye-law, which took effect from 10th February 1863, it 
' is provided " that the limits of the District of the River Forth 
* " shall be — on the north, Fife Ness ; on the south, the boundary 
' " between the counties of Haddington and Berwick ; and that the 
* " District shall consist of the portions of the sea-coast and the 
* " estuary, and the river contained between the said points." 
' By the interpretation clause of " The Salmon Fisheries (Scot- 
* " land) Act, 1861," it is declared that the term "River" shall 
' " include tributaries and any lake from or through which any 
* " river flows." 
' By the first sub-section of section 6 of the Salmon Fisheries 
* Act of 1862, the Commissioners of Scotch Salmon Fisheries are 
empowered " to fix and define, for the purposes of this Act, and 
' " the other Acts relating to Salmon and Salmon Fisheries in 
' " Scotland, the natural limits which divide each river in Scotland 
* " (including the estuary thereof) from the sea, in so far as the 
* " same may not be already fixed by statute or judicial decision." 
' Acting under the powers thus conferred, the said Commissioners 
* drew up a Bye-law, which took effect from 14th May 1865, 
' and which fixed the estuary of the Forth to be " a straight line 
* " drawn from the Hound Point on the south shore to St David's 
' " Point on the north." 
' It seems clear that the above line terminates the River Forth, 
' properly so called. All beyond and outside that line — that is to 
* say, to Fife Ness on the north and the boundary between the 
' counties of Berwick and Haddington on the south — is sea and sea- 
