plished by limiting the grants of lands bordering on the Great Lakes to low-water mark. It does not follow, however, that the owner of lands thus bounded has no rights to the use of the water or the soil beneath it. It is well settled in this country, that where the law is that the owner is limited by either high or low water mark, he has the right to con. struct warehouses, wharves or piers in the water in front of his land, in aid of and not obstructing navigation. Railroad Co. v. Schurmeir 7 Wall. 272; Yates v. Milwaukee 10 Wall. 497; Providence Steam-engine Co. v. Providence etc. Steamship Co. 12 R. I. 348; Coburn v. Ames 52 Cal. 385; Mather v. Chapman 40 Conn. 382;. Drury v. Midland R. R. Co. 127 Mass. 571; Boston v. Richardson 105 Mass. 351; Lakeman v. Burnham 7 Gray 437; State v. Sargent 45 Conn. 358; Moulton v. Libbey 37 Me. 472; Clement v. Burns 43 N. H. 609. In some states this right is said not to exist without legislative authority. Tinicum Fishing Co. v. Carter 61 Penn. St. 21; Garitee v. Baltimore 53 Md. 432; Alden v. Pinney 12 Fla. 348; Norfolk City v. Cooke 27 Grat. 430; Rice v. Ruddiman 10 Mich. 125.

The defendant claims that the decisions of this Court have settled the question of riparian ownership to lands bordering upon the navigable waters of this State, and that by such decisions his rights as such owner covers the locus in quo in this case; and he cites us to the following cases: Rice v. Ruddiman 10 Mich. 125; Bay City Gas-Light Co. v. Industrial Works 28 Mich. 183; Pere Marquette Boom Co. v. Adams 44 Mich. 404; Watson v. Peters 26 Mich. 517; Lorman v. Benson 8 Mich. 18.

None of the foregoing cases involved the rights of riparian owners of land bounded by the waters of the Great Lakes. In the case of Rice v. Ruddiman, Lake Muskegon was treated by three of the judges as a widening of the Muskegon river, but the majority of the Court based their decision upon the well-recognized principle that the owner of the shore had the right to make use of the shallow waters in front of his premises, by the construction of wharves, buildings and other improvements, so long as the public servi

tude was not thereby impaired, and it was immaterial whether the particular place in controversy was a part of Lake Michigan or not. The case of Pere Marquette Boom Co. v. Adams was clearly the case of a river, although called Pere Marquette lake. This lake is formed by a widening of the waters of the river before they reach Lake Michigan, and no reason is apparent why the principles applicable to rivers should not govern the rights of riparian proprietors upon this so-called lake.

The defendant calls attention to the case of Richardson v. Prentiss 48 Mich. 88, as deciding the very point in issue, and claims that it was there held that the owner of lands upon the shore of Thunder Bay does own the soil under the water in front of his upland, and has the exclusive enjoyment of the usual riparian right appurtenant thereto, and he insists that the only question to be considered is the extent of those rights, and that, subject to the right of navigation, there is no limit of distance from the shore, save only the central thread of the stream or center line of the lake, and that there is no limit at all to the depth of water in which he may exercise his right. If the position is correct that the owner of land bounding on Thunder Bay has the same riparian rights that the owner of land bounded by a river or other stream has, then there can be no question as to his exclusive right to fish in the waters where plaintiff had attempted to, in this case, and that plaintiff was a trespasser, and defendant was justified in removing the stakes driven by plaintiff, for the law is well settled that riparian proprietors upon fresh-water streams have the exclusive right of fishing in the waters opposite their lands. Gould on Waters § 182, and cases cited in note 1; Angell on Water-courses 861; Hart v. Hill 1 Whart. 124; Beckman v. Kreamer 43 Ill. 447.

The case of Richardson v. Prentiss does not conflict with the views I have expressed. Although the case discusses the rights of riparian owners, and refers to them generally in the language of the authorities as extending ad medium filum aquæ, yet the case presented was whether a person,

after selling to complainant land bounded by the waters of the lake, could go in front of complainant and appropriate the land under the water. The grantor had no more right to exercise exclusive dominion over the soil under the water in front of the lands of her grantee than an entire stranger; and it is clear upon all the authorities that complainant had certain riparian rights flowing from her, being the owner of the shore, which neither her grantor nor any other person could deprive her of without her consent. The question to be decided was whether the complainant's grantor, after selling the shore to complainant, had riparian rights in front of the lands sold which she could appropriate to her own private and exclusive use, and it was held that she had not, and that the complainant had a right to be protected against the unauthorized appropriation of such land which would deprive her of her access to the water.

I have already cited numerous authorities to show that riparian rights exist on the banks of waters, whether navigable or not navigable, whether subject to ebb and flow of tide or not. The subject is fully discussed and authorities collated in Gould on Waters §§ 124, 140, 149.

There is nothing in the previous decisions of this State which determines the defendant's exclusive right of fishing at the point stated in the declaration. I think that the waters of Thunder Bay are public waters, and the right of fishing therein is a common right of all the citizens of this State, subject only to the paramount right of navigation, and is the subject of legislative control. Angell on Tide Waters S$ 124, 21, 22; McCready v. Virginia 94 U. S. 391; State v. Company 49 N. H. 250; Sloan v. Biemiller 34 Ohio St. 492; 3 Kent's Com. 418. These fisheries are beginning to assume great commercial importance. The census report for the year 1880 shows that the capital invested in the fisheries of this State was nearly half a million of dollars, employing seventeen hundred and eighty-one men, and the value of the product was nearly three quarters of a million dollars.

The State has already taken the subject under its control. There is a permanent board of fish commissioners, and laws

have from time to time been passed regulating the time and manner of catching fish. How. Stat. ch. 63. Section 2172 of this chapter provides:

"It shall be unlawful for any person or persons to put into any of the waters fronting or bordering land where fish are taken by the legal owner or occupant of such lands, any vessel or ship ballast, stone, sand, coal cinder, ashes, log slabs, decayed wood, bark, saw dust, or obstruction, or filth of any other description, or to place or drive any pound net piles or stakes, or any other piles or stakes, or posts, or build any platforms or piers, or any species of seines or continuous trap nets, to the extent of the breadth of such legal owner or occupant's lands so far as the channel banks of the rivers, and to one mile from the beach or shore, at low-water mark of the lakes, straits, inlets and bays on said waters fronting such owner or occupant's lands, and it shall subject any boat-owner, or captain of any vessel, to a fine of not exceeding fifty dollars, who shall willfully run into or molest any pound net, trap or other stationary nets, or fixtures set in the lakes for fishing purposes."

This statute protects the defendant in the exclusive right within one mile from the shore of Sulphur Island, but beyond that limit the right of fishing is common, and the public have equal rights there. It appears to me that the statute has protected the defendant to the full extent he can. reasonably ask, and when he went beyond that limit and pulled out and destroyed plaintiff's stakes, he was liable to an action for the damages occasioned thereby.

The judgment is affirmed.

CAMPBELL, J. I agree in holding that the riparian owner in this case had no right to interfere with the fishing apparatus of plaintiff. But I do not entirely agree with the views expressed by my brother Champlin as to the character of aquatic rights in the lakes. I think there is no doubt of the right of the owner of lands on the borders of the lakes to make such use of the covered lands adjacent as will not injuriously affect navigation; and that there is no such proprietary division known on these waters as high or low-water mark. I agree that it depends on the law of the State how far rights

may be exercised consistently with public casement of navigation in the submerged lands. But I regard it as settled by the common law of this State that such rights exist, so far as they can be reasonably enforced and identified.

But there are two difficulties in the way of defining these rights on our large lakes, as they might be and are defined in the narrower waters connecting the lakes. One is the impossibility of defining the boundaries where there is no filum aquæ; and the other is the public character of the waters which gives the State a much larger control than over strictly private waters.

In carrying out lines of ownership in narrow streams, it is easy to find the general course of the stream, and to draw lines perpendicular to that course from the terminal shore lines. But on lakes all lines from the shore tend to converge in some central part of the lake, and while irregularity of shape prevents drawing them to a common center, they must all, if protracted, cross each other in a perplexing way. The rule adopted in such waters, where the whole surface could be appropriated, has always been to divide the water area in proportion to the shore frontage, and never to attempt any division by lines run from the shore, except over such parts of the lake as are substantially adjacent to the shore. In some cases by a fair partition, a shore-owner would, by his extent of shore-line, obtain a share beyond the center. But it seems impossible, if the whole water is to be regarded as divided up, to reach a division without some proceeding in the nature of a partition, which will fix the various possessions.

This would be practically impossible in such bodies of water as are great commercial ways, and lie within different states and nations. And in navigable waters, it becomes a purely theoretical question in most cases, except where adjacent riparian owners may jostle each other near the shore line in their improvements or local occupation.

There can be no doubt of the right of the state to forbid any erections within such parts of the water as are strictly navigable, and to regulate the distance beyond which no private erections can be maintained. This has been done on the