Page:Memoirs of the late John Kippen, cooper, in Methven, near Perth.pdf/9

 power of itfelf to erradicate. For example, it was impossible to convince him that a fish of any kind was more the property of one man than of another, or that a wild fowl or quadruped who was not domesticated, could be properly claimed by any one, or in other words, he imagined that all these were the property of the sportsman, who had as much ingenuity as kill them. No doubt these ideas originated with him in the way he was brought up. Being always active and lively, he was frequently taken out by the young gentlemen in the neighbourhood to assist them in the diversions of the field and the river, and he soon became an excellent sportsman. The game he saw run from field to field, without any regard to the property they fed on, "These therefore (said John) belong to nobody, and I have as good a right to them as any man living, and as to the fish, is it not certain that they emigrate annually to the sea, and does not every