difficulty in procuring food for them; but this would be easily got over at a very small expense, and with a few adult salmon more fry may be sent to sea annually than the whole produce of the river at present amounts to, after having encountered the sweeping perils I have mentioned.”—­P. 43.

[Footnote 11:  See Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.  Vol.  XV.  Part iii. p. 343.]

Our author then proposes that proprietors should call meetings for the purpose, and that parr, hitherto so named, should now, in their capacity of young salmon, be protected by law.  He advises all who have an interest in the river, to consider the wisdom of mutual accommodation; the owners of the more seaward banks being dependent on the upper heritors for the protection of the spawning fish and fry, while they, on the other hand, are equally dependent on the former for an honest adherence to the weekly close-time.

But a thoughtful consideration of this portion of our subject would lead us into a somewhat interminable maze, including the policy of our ancient Acts of Parliament, and the nature of estuaries,—­those mysteriously commingled “watteris quhar the sea ebbis and flowis,”—­“ubi salmunculi vel smolti, seu fria alterius generis piscium maris vel aquae dulcis, (nunquam) descendunt et ascendunt,”—­and then the stake-net question stretches far before us, and dim visions of the “Sutors of Cromarty” rise upon our inward eye, and the wild moaning of the “Gizzin Brigs” salutes our ear, and defenders are converted into appellants, and suspenders into respondents, and the whole habitable earth assumes for a time the aspect of a Scotch Jury Court, which suddenly blazes into the House of Lords.[12]

[Footnote 12:  Certain river mouths and estuaries in the north of Scotland “within flude-marke of the sea,” have lately given rise to various questions of disputed rights regarding the erection of stake-nets, and the privilege of catching salmon with the same.  These questions involve the determination of several curious though somewhat contradictory points in physical geography, geology, and the natural history of fishes and marine vegetation.]

That salmon return with great regularity to the river in which they were originally bred, is now well known.  Mr Scrope, however, thinks that they do not invariably do so, but will ascend other rivers during spawning time, if they find their own deficient in bulk of water.  Thus many Tweed salmon are caught in the Forth, (a deep and sluggish stream,) and a successful fishing there is usually accompanied by a scarce one in the Tweed.  Yet we know that they will linger long, during periods of great drought, in those mingled waters where the sea “comes and gangs,”—­as was well seen in the hot and almost rainless summer of 1842, when the Berwick fishings were abundant, but those of Kelso and the upper streams extremely unproductive.  The established fact, however, that