the spawn. The plain handwriting of Nature, as well as the regulation of municipal law, seems to prohibit the killing of the fish at this season, when they are said to be foul, are most uncomely to look upon, and even when smoked (the only mode of using them) are accounted a very unhealthy and deleterious food. The penalties are also very high, sufficiently so to prove totally ruinous to the class of persons by whom the laws of close-time are infringed. Yet neither the fears of punishment nor of poison have any effect in preserving the spawning fish, which are destroyed in the upper parts of the river, and the brooks and streams by which these are fed, with a degree of eagerness which resembles a desire to retaliate upon those who engrossed all the fish during the open season by destroying all such as the close-time throws within the mercy of the high country. The proprietors and better class of farmers do not indeed partake in these devastations, but they witness them with perfect indifference, perhaps not without a sense of gratified revenge. As they neither have the amusement of angling, nor the convenience of a fish for their tables, when the salmon are in season, it is not of the least personal consequence to them whether the breed is preserved or destroyed, and they are as indifferent to it as a man who has no game of his own, is to the extent of poaching on a sporting squire's manor. The proprietors of the lower fisheries, the only persons whose purses are interested, may, indeed, prosecute offenders in the proper courts; but the country in which the spear and torch are so actively employed during the black-fishing, as this species of poaching is called, is wild, mountainous, and thinly inhabited, so that it is difficult to obtain such proof of delinquency as is requisite for conviction. If water-bailiffs are sent from a lower part of the river, they must encounter, as strangers employed in an obnoxious office, much difficulty, and even danger. If they desire to engage officers within the district for this species of preventive service, the office will not be accepted by any with the purpose of discharging its duties with the necessary activity, in a case where the whole peasants of the country make common cause, and where the gentry are totally indifferent. It is only by enlisting these last in the cause, that a predominant authority, constantly exerted, might probably lessen this great evil. For two or three years after the last Tweed Act was passed, we believe the laws were better kept both at the mouth of the river and in the upper country. But, at present, the destruction of the spawning fish is universal, and joined to the engrossing activity with which the fish are prevented from ascending in the lawful season, must necessarily compel the salmon to leave the river; for even the strong instinct which induces the salmon to return to the stream in which it was bred, will give way under such unremitting persecution as the river at present undergoes-while, to use a vulgar but expressive 66 phrase, the two classes of persons inhabiting the and lower banks are upper both ends." burning the candle at Neither do the upper and lower heritors, as they are called in Scotland, play for equal stakes. It is true the occupation of Halieus and his philosophical companions is nigh lost in the upper districts. But the loss is that of sport merely; whereas that which may be suffered at the mouth of the river shall affect patrimonial interest, to the extent of several thousands a-year. The most probable mode of redeeming these fisheries from almost sure ruin would, perhaps, be a compromise, by which the upper heritors should be admitted to share such a portion of the fish for their sport and their table as they formerly enjoyed -they, on the other hand, exerting themselves, as they have the means of doing, to prevent or punish those who transgress during close-time. But we have no expectation of such an agreement. If, for example, it were proposed to afford a free use of twenty-four hours per week, in addition to those already conceded between Saturday and Sunday night, it would probably be difficult to induce the inferior proprietors to sacrifice one-sixth part of their immediate weekly gains even for the probability of securing from destruction the fishery out of which these gains arise. Or, indeed, if the proprietors of the lower fisheries took a more expanded view of their own interests, and judged it worth while to make a partial sacrifice to preserve the whole, it might still be found difficult or impos sible to reconcile their tenants, whose interest is of a temporary character, to submission to a loss which should affect their profit immediately, in order to secure the prosperity of the fisheries at a period when they might be let to other persons. We are happy, therefore, that a sport which we have admired is recorded in Salmonia-where the descendants of those who have witnessed or shared it will read of it with the same feelings wherewith the present generation peruse accounts of the chase of red or fallow deer, wild-boars or wild-cattle, "All once our own." We must now conclude with the parting address of the Coryphæus of Salmonia to his party, p. 270. "I have made you idlers at home and abroad, but I hope to some purpose; and I trust you will confess the time bestowed upon angling has not been thrown away. The most important principle perhaps in life is to have a pursuit― a useful one if possible, and at all events an innocent one. And the scenes you have enjoyed the contemplations to which they have led, and the exercise in which we have indulged, have, I am sure, been very salutary to the body, and, I hope, to the mind. I have always found a peculiar effect from this kind of life; it has appeared to bring me back to early times and feelings, and to create again the hopes and happiness of youthful days." [Sir Humphry Davy died at Geneva, on the 30th May, 1829, in his 51st year. Shortly after his death appeared his Consolations of Travel, or Last Days of a Philosopher.] ARTICLE XIII. ANCIENT HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. ["Annals of the Caledonians, Picts, and Scots; and of Strathclyde, Cumberland, Galloway, and Murray. By Joseph RITSON, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1828." From the Quarterly Review for July, 1829.] THE situation of Scotland, in respect to her early history, was, till of late years, extremely odd. Her inhabitants believed themselves, and, by dint of asseveration persuaded others to believe them, one of the most ancient nations in the world, possessed of clear and indisputable documents authenticating their history up to the very earliest era of recorded time. This error was no mere transitory ebullition of vanity, but maintained and fostered by reference to divers respectable tissues, entitled Histories of Scotland, — all ringing the changes upon a set of fables which had been ingeniously invented to prevent the disgrace of Thus do avowed ignorance. "Geographers on pathless downs |