The salmon

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]\rajor-General.A. A. MIJXUO,

FKANT, SUSSEX,

HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

LIBRARY

OF THE

MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY

/H

>-

THE SALMON.
OCT 1 3 1931

EDINBURGH : PRINTED BY THOMAS CONSTABLK,
FOR

EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS.

LONDON .
CAMBRIDGE
DUBLIN .
GLASGOW .

HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO.
MACMILLAN AND CO.
m'gLASHAN and GILL.
JAMES MACLEHOSE.

THE SALMON

BY

ALEX. RUSSEL

EDINBURGH
EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS

MDCCCLXIV.
S

NOTE.

Portions of this Volume have appeared in the
Quarterly Review, Blackwood's Magaziiie, the Edin-
burgh Review, and the Scotsman.

A. R.

Scotsman Office,
Edinburgh, May 1864.

PAGE

C 0 N T E jN T S.

CHArTEB I.

VALUE OF THE SALMON.
Property — Employment — Food — Sport, ..... 1

CHAPTER II.

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON.

The Parr — Period of Emigration — Period of Immigration —
What's a Grilse? — Natural Waste of Salmon Life — What are
" Spring Salmon ?"—" Fish of the Salmon kind," . . 31

CHAPTER III.

DECAY OF SALMON.

Amount of the Decay — Periods — Causes, . . . .88

CHAPTER IV.

SALMON LEGISLATION.

Principles of all Salmon Legislation — Ancient Legislation — Its
Curiosities — Suspension of Legislation — Renewal upon the Old
Principles — Difference between Agricultural and Fishery Pro-
perty— The Duke of Roxburghe — Upper and Lower Proprie-
tors— Harmlessness of Angling — The Tweed Acts of 1857

VIII CONTENTS.

PAGE

and 1859— The Tay Act of 1858— Ness and Beauly Bill of
1860 — Committee of the House of Lords — Royal Commission
of Inquiry for England — General Scotch Bill of 1861 —
General Scotch Act of 1862— English Act of 1861— Irish
Acts of 1842 and 1862, 134

CHAPTER V.

FUTURE SALMON LEGISLATION.
Scotch Fixed Nets — Pollution of Rivers, ...... 180

CHAPTEPt VI.

NON-LEGISLATIVE REMEDIES.

Domestic Breeding and Rearing — Fish, Flesh, and Fowl — Revo-
lution in the Fish Market — " Peace, Reform, and Retrench-
ment," 214

Table showing the Open Seasons for Net and Rod Fishing in
Scotch Rivers, so far as fixed at May 1864, .... 235

Index 237

CHAPTER I.

VALUE OF THE SALMON.

Property — Employment — Food — Sport.

There are at least two respects in which the subject
of Salmon is important, and two in which it is interesting.
It is important commercially, the salmon fisheries forming-
ancient and valuable property, a large means of employ-
ment, and a very considerable supply of food ; somewhat
less important as furnishing an old and keenly-relished
sport, the privilege of exercising which has become a
sort of property superadded to the value for purely
commercial uses. It is interesting as involving some
of the strangest facts, the most instructive experiments,
and the most perplexing mysteries in natural history ;
and as having within these few years undergone inves-
tigation more searching and legislation more \'igorous
than for centuries before.

The subject, too, is especially a British, or British-
and-Irish one — still more especially a Scottish one. The
great majority of countries have by nature been cut
off from direct interest and from any kind of power
in the matter, and no country has an interest at once
so great and so imperilled as our own ; for upon few
nations has the gift of the king of fish been conferred,

A

2 THE SALMON.

aiid by almost no nation more tlian this has that gift
been neglected and abused. The great nations of the
past, like Rome and Persia, longed to possess, the great
nations of the future, like Australia and New Zealand,
are labouring to obtidn, what we have been carelessly
losing, or even wantonly destroying. When the patriotic
Fluellen, in his eagerness to establish a parallel between
Henry of Agincourt and "Alexander the Pig," not
content witli alleging that there is a river in Macedon,
and "also, moreover," a river in Monmouth, ventured
to add that there were " salmons in both," he not only
belied the high testimonial he had given himself as " a
goot man in all particularities," but did injustice to the
rarity and value of a privilege intrusted, not altogether
worthily, to the now United Kingdom. For he was
entirely wrong in the particularity of there being, or ever
having been, "salmons" in the rivers of Macedon, or in-
deed in any of the waters that feed the Mediterranean,
— a deprivation all the harder upon the natives of those
regions that, as appears pretty clearly from history, the
Macedonians centuries ago, appreciated and practised
the art of angling, being apparently one of the very few
nations that borrowed that imjDortant portion of civilisa-
tion from the Egyptians, who were the first, and perhaps
for many ages the only jDCople, that " cast angles into
the brook." When Alexander, leaving salmonless Mace-
donia behind, led the way to the far East, he was un-
consciously going in the wrong direction ; for there are
no salmons in the Ganges either, and his "royal feast
for Persia won" must have been wretchedly defective in
its second course. More wise and fortunate was Caesar,

VALUE OF THE SALMON. 3

who turned his attention to Gaul and Britain, and whose
soldiers had no sooner reached the banks of the Garonne,
than the saltatory motions of the salmon cleaving his
joyous way through the fresh water, after his sojourn in
the ocean, excited their attention, admiration, and appe-
tite, and procured for him the specific name which has
since stuck to him, and to which, though by reason of
persecution greatly distressed both in body and mind,
he still continues to do justice. We cannot be quite
sure that Cresar ever dined off salmon, nor even that in-
formation on such a point could be procured from him-
self, did we know his present address, for he was one of
the very few great men of history who were neither
powerful nor particular at table. But we are warranted
to please ourselves with conjuring up the image of the
Roman soldiers, as they kept watch and ward by the wall
of Hadrian and of Antoninus, ever consoling themselves
with a cut from the "tail-scud" of a twenty-pounder,
prepared in those three-legged camp-kettles which ap-
pear to have been designed for the very purpose. And
we can feel sure, too, of the contempt with which those
old campaigners would look down upon the blinded and
besotted aborigines of Northumberland and the south-
eastern counties of Scotland, who, among other odious
and unaccountable peculiarities of habit, are more or
less authentically recorded to have entirely abstained
from the use of fish. Can it be possible that the modern
"black-fishers" of the Teviot have in their veins the
smallest tin(iture of the Ijlood of these non-ichthyophagous
barbarians ? In the interest alike of mankind and of
fishkind, it is to be desired that they had ; that the breed

4 THE SALMON.

had been kept pure, and the custom sacred. But to
have done with the ancients, both foreign and domestic,
although rumours of the dehcacy of the salmon reached
the Eomans like a sweet-smelling savour, — though Pliny
recorded what he knew of its habits, and Ausonius
sang of its beauties and edible qualities, — and a demand
for the article instantly sprung up among that knowing
and luxurious people, supply for once did not follow
demand, because the Alps intervened, and because the
secret of packing in ice was only discovered by a Scotch
laird, called Dempster of Dunnichen, about 1780 years
too late for the Eoman markets.

Putting together all the evidence that has come down
to us, in history, poetry, and ancient laws, the conclusion
is that the Three Kingdoms, but more especially Scotland,
have from the beginning hitherto been pre-eminently the
kingdoms of the salmon — at least, if we take into account
consumption as well as production. In old times we
obviously had a great comparative superiority over the
two or three countries that could then be called our
neighbours, and though we have undergone an alarming
decay, our superiority as compared with neighbours —
Norway, perhaps, excepted — is greater than ever,
some nations having decayed much faster than we, and
others having reached that extinction to which, until
lately, we were only hastening. It is clear that, from
Scotland at least, there was in old times a large export
of salmon (chiefly salted), many curious proofs of the
fact being found among the old Scottish statutes ; and
it seems almost equally clear that England also had an
over-abundant supply, except in those districts far re-

VALUE OF THE .SALMON. 5

moved from the fisheries. If we do not now supply
foreign markets, it is not because there is no foreign
demand, but because we have not enough for our own
supply, even as a costly luxury. Great Britain, in truth,
has become more than ever the salmon-producing and
salmon-eating country of the world, and when the fish
ceases from among us, the end of all salmon is at hand.
True, we are told by Sir John Eoss that the production of
salmon in the Arctic regions is so great that in Boothia
Felix 100 lbs. can be bought for a knife (knives are
scarce), and that they are eaten to such an extent that he
saw an Esquimaux dispose of a stone-weight to lunch,
before beginning to dine in earnest dff the same dish ;
and we have also heard of the abundance that pre-
vails in Norway, and in New Brunswick and British
Columbia. But, l6'^, almost all those places are, or at
least have hitherto been, for market purposes inaccess-
ible : 2d, the fish seem to be, in some of the most
abounding districts, of a coarser species than that which
would appear to be almost peculiar to the British rivers
(indeed, so marked was the clifierence for the worse of
the Arctic salmon, that Dr. Richardson, the naturalist of
Sir James Ross's expedition, considered it quite a new
species, and, by a somewhat equivocal compliment, named
it the Salmo Rossii) : and, 3d, the salmon abound in
those regions mainly because they have not been in the
habit of being caught. In Norway, fish have been becom
ing rapidly more scarce since ever our own anglers taught
the natives the way and the advantage of killing them ;
and one of the latest books regarding the salmon regions
of North America (Hind's Labrador) shows in detail that

6 THE SALMON.

as North American salmon hemn to come within reach

o

of men and of markets, they disappear as rapidly as have
North American deer. To what, then, do we owe it that
there still remains to us in this thickly populated country
a fish which has become almost extinct among so many of
our neighbours ? Next to the fact that naturally our sup-
ply is great in quantity as well as unequalled in qunlity,
we owe it to the law having cared for the fish, not always
wisely nor altogether well, but better than if it had not
cared at all. Of late years, various malign influences
affecting the salmon have increased in power, and still
more lately — though not, it may be hoped, too late —
legislation has sought to provide proportionally powerful
preventives and correctives, into whose efficiency and
deficiencies it is here proposed to make some inquiry.

Perhaps, however, there may be people inclined to
ask what sufficient interest the publi(^ have in this fish
to justify so much making of laws and of books. Among
the answers that may be given to such a question are
these : that salmon-fisheries are a property as ancient
and marketable, to which the owners have as good a
right, and which the law is as much bound to protect, as
property in lands and houses ; and further, that they
provide employment, food, and sport, all these three
things, and not least the last, being good things, nnd
worthy of preservation.

The nature of the tenure of salmon-fisheries as Pro-
perty is not the same in England and Ireland as in
Scotland ; 1)ut in all the three kingdoms the property
has for several centuries l)een recognised l)y law, and
passed from hand to hand in gift or purchase. In

VALUE OF THE SALMON. 7

Englciiid and Ireland, indeed, there is no clear legal
distinction between a salmon-fishery and any other kind
of fishery, and as a general rule a fishery of whatever
kind — excepting on the coast and in the tidal parts of
rivers — is an appurtenance of the soil ; but in Scotland,
the right of salmon-fishing, both in sea and river, forms
a property distinct from the soil, and belongs to the
Crown, excluding those very numerous cases in which
the Crown has conveyed the right to individuals and
their heirs by express grant. It should l)e added, how-
ever, that in Irehind (where both the laws and customs
have long been in distracting confusion) there has
always been practically more of a difierence than in
Scotland or even Eno;land between the riofht of fishino-
in tidal waters and in rivers. The right in Irish tidal
waters has been held at common law to belong, not to
the owners of the soil, as in Irish rivers, but to the
Crown, as do salmon -fishery rights in the sea in
England, and both in sea and river in Scotland. But
again, there has been this difierence between Scotland
and Ireland as to the law and treatment of Crown
rights in salmon-fisheries : in Scotland, the right had
been for the greater part granted away to private
persons, and where not so granted, has not been used
at all, at least not legally ; while in Ireland, except in
a very few cases where the right had been granted
away in ancient times, it has been held for and exer-
cised by the public. In England, salmon- fisheries were
recognised, protected, and regulated as property, l)y
Magna Charta, and Ijoth in England and Ireland began
to be legislated for as property at least six hundred

8 THE SALMON.

years ago ; while in Scotland the property, besides having
legal recognition equally ancient, has in multitudes of
cases been separated for centuries from the soil, to which
indeed it had in some cases never been attached, and
has scores of times been separately bought and sold,
divided and subdivided. The total value of the salmon-
fisheries of the United Kingdom, as property, has, owing
to a variety of difficulties, never been ascertained. In
England, indeed, the value had lately become so small
as scarcely to be worth reckoning or asking about. Of
Ireland, the Irish Fishery Commissioners reported a
few years ago : — " We have no means of obtaining an
account of the aggregate annual value of the salmon-
fisheries ;" but the value for Ireland has since then been
stated semi-officially at about £200,000 a year, and
rapidly increasing. On the other hand, a recent Eeturn
(Pari. Paper, No. 227, Sess. 1863), purporting to give
the name, owner, and poor-law valuation of every fishery
in Ireland, brings out the not very grand total of
£12,307, 15s. ! The tremendous disparity between
these two statements is in part to be accounted for by
the larger proportion of the Irish fisheries consisting of
what is called " common fisheries," and so not rateable
as property, and by many especially of the bag-net
fisheries being divided into such small shares as to leave
no one of the owners with what is termed a " con-
siderable," w^hich seems practically to mean a rateable
fishery. Indeed, we know of one Irish fishery, the rent
of which is not much less than half of the whole sum
which this Parliamentary Return gives as the rental of
all the hundreds of fisheries in Ireland. All that can l^e

VALUE OF THE SALMON. V

learned about the value of Irish fisheries leads to little,
except the conclusion that neither of the two statements
referred to— neither that which shows £200,000, nor
that which shows £12,307, 15s., — is useful for much
except misguidance. In a considerably modified de-
gree, a similar remark applies to a Parliamentary Return
published in this present year, purporting to give the
name, value, and mode of capture, of every salmon-
fishery in Scotland. As this is the first attempt to
procure ofiicial or authentic information as to the whole
Scotch fisheries, it is welcome as a beginning ; but it
has the rudeness and imperfection of a beginning. . It
both omits and misstates. Many fisheries are not in-
cluded at all ; of nearly 700 fisheries named, the value
of 80, or nearly a sixth of the whole, is not given ;
the principle on which the valuation is made is not
stated ; it appears to have been made on quite differ-
ent principles in different cases ; and in the great ma-
jority of cases, the statement is far below the fact.
Thus, the annual profits of the Duke of Richmond's
fisheries on the Spey have been stated before Parlia-
mentary Committees, by both the late and present
Dukes, to amount to close upon £13,000 (more than
the value of the whole of the Irish fisheries as officially
returned !) ; but this Return puts at only about £9000 the
value of all the fisheries in both the counties in which the
Richmond or Gordon fisheries are situated. The actual
rental or annual value of three Scotch fishery districts —
the Tay, the Spey, and the twin rivers entering the sea
at Aberdeen — amounts to nearly £40,000 ; and yet this
Return makes the value for all Scotland only £52,615.

10 THE SALMON.

The Return also, as being a purely Scottish Return, ex-
cludes about three-fourths of the fisheries of the Tweed,
both banks of that river being politically in England for the
first jBve miles, which comprise the most valuable fisheries.
When, therefore, it is said that the total annual value
for Scotland, shown by this Return, is £52,615, it has
also to be said that that sum is little more than a mul-
tiplicand requiring to be operated upon by some un-
ascertained multiplicator in order to bring out a correct
result. All the facts that can be got thus serve Ijut vaguely
to indicate the aggregate value of fisheries whicli, even
confining the view to Scothmd, invade almost every-
thing that can be called river, and sentinel at close
though irregular intervals at least a thousand miles of
coast. It is enough, however, for present purposes,
that the salmon-fisheries of the United Kinodom form
a property indisputable as to right, and reckoning as to
rental or annual value l)y hundreds of thousands of
pounds — as to value of product, hy at least three or
four times the rental. Perhaps it may be desirable to
add, for the benefit or tlie placating of such persons
as may be disposed to think that, in such matters, la
propriete cent le vol, that in England and Ireland
a considerable proportion of the fisheries (in Ireland,
it is said, more than a half) are not private property
at all, but are as free to all comers as the fisheries for
cod or ling.

Similar difiiculties stand in the way ()f ascertaining
the total amount of employment furnished by the
salmon-fisheries, though here again it is comi)aratively

VALUE OF THE SALMON. 11

easy to get the statistics of a few localities. Thus
salmon-nets employ, on the Tay, about 700 men, receiv-
ing in wages about £9000 a year, and on the Tweed,
about 350 men, receiving about £4500. Even if the
total value or rental were known, it would be impossible
to deduce the total amount of employment, the propor-
tion of labour to rent differing greatly according to the
natural circumstances and the number of separate or
competing fisheries in each river or estuary. But the
question of employment may, for two reasons, be con-
fessed as not entitled to very much weight in estimating
the importance of the whole subject. It is an employ-
ment which by law — the law of nature quite as much as
the law of the land — cannot extend over much more
than half the year ; and unfortunately, it is available
only during those months in which other kinds of out-
door labour are abundant, and is suspended during those
months when the other kinds also fail. Further (as shall
Ijc afterwards explained), the labour of salmon-fishing is
to a great extent lal)our lost, an equal or greater produce
being obtainable under a thoroughly reformed mode of
fishing, with a mere fraction of the present toil and cost.
Whilst thus admitting, however, that the question of
employment is of more interest to the few thousands
of men — an honest and stalwart race — who live by the
dragging of nets, than to the community at large, it is
still insisted that (so long, at least, as the present system
of working fisheries is continued) the legal " protection"
preserving their employment from extinction, is not and
would not he given them at the cost of any one else, and
that their loss wuuld be noljody's gain.

12 THE SALMON.

Once more, kindred difficulties present themselves in
estimating the total quantity of Food supplied by the
salmon-fisheries, though a glance at one or two of the
ascertained facts will let us see that in this respect also
the matter is worth looking after. From the Reports of
the Irish Commissioners, we learn that, in 1862, appar-
ently an ordinary year, three Irish railways conveyed
400 tons, or about 900,000 lbs. of salmon, being equal
in weight and treble in value to 15,000 sheep, or 20,000
mixed sheep and laml.is. In Scotland, the Tay alone
furnishes about 800,000 lbs., being equal in weight and
treble in value to 18,000 sheep. The weight of salmon
produced by the Spey is equal to the weight of mutton
annually yielded to the butcher by each of several of the
smaller counties. The diminution in the supply of
food caused by the decay of the Tweed fisheries, is about
200,000 lbs. a year. And in making comparisons between
the supplies of fish and of flesh, it must be kept in mind
that fish, or at least salmon, though higher in money
value, cost nothing for their " keep," make bare no pas-
ture, hollow out no turnips, consume no corn, but are,
as Franklin expressed it, " bits of silver pulled out of
the water." To the legal protection of salmon, therefore,
there apply none of the arguments that are sometimes
supposed to apply to cases falsely assumed as similar.
When a man turns his land to the use of wild-deer, he
takes away the food of a proportionate number of sheep ;
when to an unnatural extent he preserves pheasants,
hares, and partridges, the neighbouring fields must pay
for it ; l)ut a salmon displaces nothing, eats nothing,
comes in nobody's way. It is largely, indeed, because

VALUE OF THE SALMON. lo

the salmon is, in a more than ordinary sense, the free
gift of nature, that its importance as an article of food
has been undervalued or overlooked. Minute calculations
and eloquent speeches are made on such points as the
diminution (if any) of the supply of food caused by
turning portions of a mountainous district to the pur-
pose of feeding deer instead of sheep or black cattle ;
but the inflicting of utter barrenness upon rivers, natur-
ally yielding every year hundreds of tons of not only
nutritious but delicious food, is a procedure which has
hitherto received almost no share of public attention,
much less indignation. Already, it may be safely said,
three-fourths of the natural supply have been lost ; a
little more care, and that loss may be repaired ; a little
less care, and the loss may be made complete and irre-
parable. Nor ought it to be forgotten that in this
matter the public have a more immediate, if not a greater
interest than the lessees, or perhaps even the proprietors,
of fisheries. The number who desire and can afford
to eat salmon as a luxury, and still more, the number
that on certain occasions must produce the dish at table,
has been and is increasing, and when an increasing or
maintained demand and a diminishing supply meet each
other, we find the result in aggravated prices. The
greater the scarcity, the higher the price ; and in this
comfortable conviction, and in the hope that the thing-
would last their time, the larger section of the proprietors
and their lessees have been, or at least were, until the
recent legislation, going on competing with each other who
should kill most and spare least, careless of the future.
For many years they had, as Lord Polwarth expressed

14 THE SALMON.

it a quarter of a century ago, been spending both interest
and capital, encouraged thereto by their powers of niaking
the pul)lic for a period pay for the extravagance. And
when that period had come to an end, it would have
been small consolation to the public that the salmon-
proprietors (the lessees would probaljly have taken
warning, and "got out") were the greatest sufferers ;
there would not less have been a heavy and wanton
injury to the community, a deduction from the national
wealth, a gap on the national table, and (which brings
us to the next head of discourse) an obliterated chapter
iu the national sports.

But is the salmon good for Sport ? There actually
are people that will ask such a question, though to all
l)ut the grossly ignorant it seems to verge on the insane
if not on the profane. Perhaps there may even l)e some
who, being assured that the salmon is good for sport, are
capable of asking next, what is spo7't good for ? But to
this extreme class we merely reply, that it is good for
health and for amusement — at least as good for these
purposes as much of the walking and riding that is
done under the sun, and greatly better than most of the
eating, drinking, and dancing that is done under the
chandelier. AVe may consent to admit — for it is nothing
to the purpose — that salmon-angling is actually one of
the most costly, and is apparently — that is, to the eye of
all but the person suffering — one of the dreariest and
most desperate of recreations. The expense and the
labour are great ; the material recompense inappreciable,
and often quite invisible. The average cost of a salmon

VALUE OF THE SALMON. 15

taken on the rodfislieries of the Tweed (and Tweed is
not an extreme case) was hxtely calculated as varying
between £3 and £5, countino; nothinor for time and for
travelling expenses, — the latter item, it must be under-
stood, Ijeing proportionately very heavy, because a salmon-
fisher cannot, like a grouse-sh(joter, remain at his station
f(jr weeks togetlier, but is restricted to only two or three
days after each flood. Yet the money is cheerfully paid,
and the disappointments no less cheerfully endured.
Salmon-fishing is indeed a passion, perhaps unaccount-
able as to its origin, but certainly irrepressible in an ever-
increasing proportion of the people ; while in individuals
the appetite, once implanted, almost invarial)ly grows
rapidly till the end on the very little indeed that it now
a-days has to feed upon. It is strange to think of the
exceeding desperateness of the chaiices of success which
suffice to tempt men away from their business and their
fiimilies to some of our salmon-streams ; yet those who have
most often felt and seen the hopelessness of the under-
taking, are just those who are most eager to try it again.
Look at that otherwise sensible and respectable person,
standing midway in the gelid Tweed (it is early spring
or latest autumn, the only seasons when there is now
much chance), his shoulders aching, his teeth chittering,
his coat-tails afloat, his basket empty. A few hours
ago probably, he left a comfortable home, pressing busi-
ness, waiting clients, and a dinner engagement. On
arriving at his " water," the keeper, as the tone of keepers
now is, despondingly informed him that tliere is " nae
head (shoal) o' fish," although at the utmost " there may
be a happenin' beast," or, as we have heard it expressed

10 THE SALMON,

with that tendency to a mixture of Latinisms with the
Border ijatois, which is to be ascribed, we suppose, to
the influence of the parochial schools, " There's aiblins a
traunsient brute." But in his eagerness and ignorance
he knows better than the keeper ; and there he is at it
still, in his seventh hour. The wind is in his eye, the
water is in his boots, but Hope, the charmer, lingers in
his heart. To many this is a marvel considerably
greater than that which Byron stated and explained : —

"Though shxggarrls deem it but an idle chase,
And marvel much that men should quit their easy-chair,
The toilsome way and long long league to trace,
Oh, there is sweetness in the mountain air.
And life that bloated ease can never ho[)e to share."

For surely it is still more marvellous that men should
quit not only their easy -chairs, but their native and
proper element, in pursuit of something which they very
seldom obtain, and which is to be got at home for a
twentieth part of the money, and no trouble at all. Yet
many there be that commit this folly and find a suffici-
ent reward. And pray, asks the objector, what is that P
Obviously something which unbelievers are incapable of
understanding and unworthy of enjoying. It has been
maintained, though not perhaps in cool print, by men of
sense and sobriety— men not ignorant of any of the de-
lights to which flesh has served itself heir — that the thrill
of joy, fear, and surprise (now-a-days surprise is the pre-
dominating emotion) induced by the first tug of a
salmon, is the most exquisite sensation of which this
mortal frame is susceptible — whether he come as the
summer grilse, with a flash and a splash ; or like a new-
run but more sober-minded adult, with a dignified and

VALUE OF THE ^^ALMON. 17

determined dive ; or like a l)rowii-coated old inhabitant,
with a long pull nnd a strong pull, low down in the
depths. Without discussing this point in all its aspects,
moral and physiological, it is enough that for a very
small chance of attaining the salmon-angler's delight,
whatever it is, there are multitudes prepared to pay and
suffer without asking anything whatever that is injurious
to other men, or to the public weal. Nor is it to the
purpose that there are moments — rather perhaps only
one moment — when the angler himself may half suspect
his own rationality, — the moment when, after having
toiled all day and caught nothing, he turns, soaked and
shivering, to the hut which is his home for the night,
seeing in his mind's eye his unsympathizing wife, his
unansw^ered letters, and especially his vacant chair at
the board of the friend whose good opinion and better
dinner he has recklessly forfeited. For a moment the
inclination seizes him to say with T(nichstone in the
forest, — " When I was at home, I was in a better place."
But it is but for a moment ; and then follows another
strange effect. How is it that on or near the river-side
everything he sees or tastes seems l^etter than are better
things at better places ? — bad whisky better than the
best claret ; braxy mutton than . the choice of Leaden-
hall ; the conversation of a decidedly unintellectual
keeper or boatman than the best mots of the best got-u])
diner-out ; and the repose on the pallet of chaff or straw
deeper and sweeter than often visits beds of air or
down ? Come how it may, come it does, that the dis-
cussions, the jokes, the incidents of times like these,
the memory cherishes and gloats over through man}'

B

18 THE SALMON.

years, and especially through many dreary close-times,
when multitudes of things, doubtless much brighter
and less worthy to fade, have been forgotten, or are re-
membered but as wearinesses. In short, the whole affair,
concludes the objector, even on your own showing, does
not stand to reason — an idea which, perhaps, indignant
anglers would prefer to express by saying that reason
does not stand to it.

But all this, it will be said, is ex parte ; the other side
must be heard, or at least looked at ; — in the form of phrase
employed in Douglas, You speak a fisher's — hear a fish's
voice. To every transaction in angling, there are two
parties, one at each end of the apparatus (as Dr. Johnson
said, in an unpleasant way, which may be forgiven in
consideration of the man having been blind and obese,
and having deliberately preferred muddling himself over-
night at " The Mitre," to answering in person " the
breezy call of incense-breathing morn ;") and what may
be sport to one of the parties is certainly death to the
other. Admitted — and what then 'i Fish, like all the
better members of the lower creation, were made to
be eaten ; and in order to be eaten, it is necessary
(always and carefully excepting the case of oysters)
that they should be previously killed. Possibly some-
body may be foolish enough to say — for twaddle bears
a charmed life — that killing is cruelty, to be avoided, so
far as possible, as an unpleasant necessity, not to he
sought after as a pleasant sport. A maudlin heresy,
born of ignorance and affectation. No people in this
country, or indeed in Christendom, of whatever sect,
rank, or condition, are in a position to charge anglers

VALUE OF THE .SALMON. .19

with cruelty, except the Vegetarians ; and not even tliey,
for in munching their bhides, they destroy myriads of
peculiarly innocent and harmless creatures, existing or
prospective : you take their life very effectually when
you do take the means whereby they live — and their life
besides. Just let the young lady who is shocked at the
cruelty of angling tell us on what she has been dining.
Is it not lamb, the flesh of the animal which all the
poets, over whom she has such pleasure in sighing, have
chosen as the very emblem of innocence and helpless-
ness ? " Yes, l)ut / did not kill it ; I sought no pleasure
in the poor thing's death." We join issue with you
here, and insist that wherever there is any difference
between you, the lamb-eater, and us, the fish-slayers, it
is all in our favour. To get that joint of lamb, you
hired a coarse and greasy butcher, who, with " unkind
clutches" in its fleece, roughly seized the little bleater,
tied its feet with cruel cords — those feet, you know, that
gambolled on the hill and frisked over the mead, and so
forth — dashed it roughly on a stool, and thrust a jagged
knife through its innocent throat. " Shocking !" Very ;
and all your doing. Miss ; that is, though you pretend not
to know the history of a leg of lamb, done for your de-
lectation, and in fulfilment of your orders — " Here comes
the body of Caesar, mourned by Mark Antony, who,
though he had no hand in his death, shall receive the
benefit of his dying." In virtue of the prerogative given
men over the fish of the flood — in obedience to that in-
stinct to hunt and slay, implanted in aU the sons of
Adam, and, as the chaplain in "Jonathan Wild" justly
remarked of punch, " nowhere spoken against in Scrip-

20 THE SALMON.

ture" — we quit the easy chair in which you loll whilst
your lamb is writhing in the shambles, traverse hill
and dale, plunge into the stream, and set our instinct
against the instinct of the intended prey — our ingenuity
against his cunning — our patience against his shyness ;
in short, give him fair play, letting him pit all his powers
of escape against our powers of capture. And we select
for our purposes those fish that are most scarce and
most difficult to snare, unlike you, who select the kinds
of animals that cover a thousand hills, and that nature
has left helpless.

Again ; while your lamb, when seized, was harmlessly
and helplessly " cropping the flowery food," what was our
fish doing when snared ? Seeking to compass the death
of a pretty and innocent insect ; and doing so, there is
reason to believe, from a motive very similar to that
which led us to compass his death — more for sjDort than
for victuals. He was caught in the act. As much rioht
as he had to come into our element in cruel pursuit of
our fellow earth-born, had we to go into his. A brother
of the trade has only done for him what he has done for
myriads — and what he would have done for hundreds or
even thousands more before nightfall of the very day on
which we took him into custody. It is a trade established
by nature, doubtless for wise, nay, obviously for neces-
sary purposes. The small are fed on by the great, and
these again by the greater still, in unbroken succession
and perfect harmony through all creation, " the diapason
closing full in man ;" except, indeed, in those exceptional
and objectionable cases where a lion or tiger mars the
harmony by adding another note.

VALUE OF THE SALMON. 21

But then " the mode is cnieL" Denied, whether as
compared with the usual modes of kilhng fowls and
quadrupeds, or with the wholesale or trade modes of
capturing most kinds of fish. Keep in mind that all
animals do not feel as men feel, nor all animals alike,
and that fish are pretty nearly at the bottom of the
scale ; in brief, that Shakspeare's dogma about the equal
corporal sufferance of giants and beetles, and all such fine
sayings, may be sentimentally pretty, but are scientifi-
cally nonsensical. On the other hand, take the case of
fish killed in the way of trade and not of sport. No
young lady ever thinks of bringing against the fishermen
of Newhaveu, CuUercotes, or Cowes, the charges of
cruelty she so savagely levels against her own brothers
or mnle friends, who are fishers ; but the cod or haddock
on which she regaled, before beginning the lamb (we lay
out of sight, for tlie moment, the possibility of her hav-
ing swallowed a few live oysters), sufiered more than
ever did trout or salmon snared by angler, having pro-
bably been caught on the fisherman's set line at twilight,
and been kept hanging there till morning. But (and
now we come to the last and lowest of sentimental re-
fuges) why not kiU your trout and salmon by net '^
Partly, because that mode would be more destructive
and merciless than the hook and line, and partly for
the same reason that the sea-fisherman does not take his
cod and haddock by net — because it cannot be done.
Let us be logical. Either the fish killed by anglers
could be killed by net, or they could not. In some
cases they could ; but in such cases the use of the net
would kill in greater numbers — would, in fact, extirpate,

22 THE SALMON.

cutting off every fish iii early youth. Woukl that be
more humane ? Is the death of a few, by a somewhat
less painless process, not more kind than the destruction
of a orreat multitude or of all : more in accordance with
the great principle which reason and philosophy sanction
— " the greatest happiness of the greatest number V In
some other cases, perhaps the majority, the fish caught by
angling are not to be caught by net — the so-called more
humane mode. And here let it be noted also, that kill
ing by net is not, generally speaking, more humane than
hook and line. Even with the sweep-net, a fish, in a
moderate-sized river, is as long in l^eing brought ashore
as a moderate- sized fish usually is with good angling
tackle ; while in all the other kinds of net, he undergoes,
literally, the process of being hanged by the neck during
several hours. But, passing from that, we have proved,
first, that fish were made to be killed ; second, that
ours is often the only and generally the most humane
mode of killing them. It was suggested by Macaulay,
and by somebody else long before him, that the objec-
tion of the Puritans to the practice of bear-baiting was
founded rather on the pleasure derived by the spectators
than the pain accruing to the l)ear ; for the reasons above
imperfectly stated, we venture to suggest that some
})eople may object to fishing more for the delight it
yields to the fisher than for the annoyance it may inci-
dentally inflict upon the fish.

It is of no use to argue that there must be something

o ~

more than annoyance, seeing that a hooked fish resists,
and, l)y inference, -suffers. To say nothing of the fact
that a fish resists quite ns violently when he finds his

VALUE OF THE SALMON. 23

whole l)0(ly in a net as when he finds a hook in his
mouth, the mere fact of resistance is no relevant proof
of suffering, and no adequate reason for compassion.
The resistance very probably proceeds from a mere
impatience of restraint, a love of liberty, which
should inspire, not pity, but respect and l^rotherly
sympathy, tending to draw him and us more closely
together.

Finally, anglers, besides only killing fish in one way
that would otherwise requii^e to be killed in another,
reduce the amount of killing in some other department,
and even in the fish department, and in the aggregate.
When people eat fish, they eat so much less flesh and fowl.
Therefore the proper way of calculating the results of an
angler's dealings with the animal creation is to reckon,
not merely the number of fish whose lives he may have
taken, but rather the number of fowls, lambs, sheep, and
oxen whose lives have, by his labours, been preserved.
Then arithmetic would fail to compute the amount of
insect life of which the angler is the preserver as well
as the avenger ; a small fish will take in a single day
more lives than a great angler will take in a whole season.
Further, compare the neatness and even agreeableness of
the angler's mode of operation with the hideousness and
brutality of those operations from the performance of
which he has, to so large an extent, exempted the butcher
and the poulterer — the exhilarating struggle and friendly
Ivuock on the head by the pleasant river-side, with the
felling, throat-cutting, and neck- wringing of the slaughter-
house and the pen- -and it becomes clear, to all but those
l)lind with an unwillingness to see, that the ways of the

24 THE SALMON.

angler are almost as much ways of mercy, as of peace
and pleasantness.

Sufficient refutation, indeed, of the charge of cruelty
might have been found merely in an enumeration of the
peculiarly amiable as well as eminent men who have
both praised and practised the truly gentle art. Without
going the length of saying that all good men are anglers,
we may say that most anglers are good men, and that
angling has a tendency to make men good. It soothes
and elevates, and leads to meditation and self-scrutiny.
Many a man who, in the stir and pressure of active life,
becomes hardened to the gentler and more generous
emotions, obtains glimpses that make him less forlorn or
more divine, when wandering "the quiet waters by."
The true influence of the art is seen in its literature. A
gentle and a generous man was Izaak Walton, the father
of anoiing; literature — it had a mother long; l)efore in
Dame Julyana Berners, the prioress of St. Albans. The
same may be said of almost every man Avho has contri-
buted to the subject, by no means excepting those of our
own day — the Wilsons, Jesse, Scrope, Stoddart, Stephen
01i\'er, and many more. But this is not the strongest
part of the case. While many good men have written
whole books in praise of the art, how few, either good,
bad, or indifferent, have dared to say a word in its dis-
praise ! Of course, there was Lord Byron, who calls our
old Izaak a "cruel coxcomb," and nctimWy prays — a thing
which he was " l)aith dede sweert and wretched ill o' " —
that strengtli might be granted to the "poor little trout"
to pull /;? the said Izaak and all others who might try to
pull it out. But the real truth is, that angling was far

VALUE OF THE SALMON. 25

too pure and gentle a pastime lor Lara ; and it would be
vain to reason with those who would take his authority,
whatever use or warning there may be in his example,
either as to what is cruel or what is coxcombical. Then
of course there is, as already mentioned, Dr. Johnson
with his sounding and senseless apophthegm (as he
doubtless called it) about " a stick and a string." But
he has utterly ruined his character as a witness by hav-
ing committed himself to the opinion that " the throne
of human felicity is a tavern chair." AVho can doubt
that the learned sage w^ould, as a writer, have been
much more natural and less made-up — mnch more of an
Englishman and less of an imitation Koman — had he
devoted to wandering on rivers' banks some of the time
he employed in sitting upon his throne of human felicity,
— had he listened more to the tongues that are in trees,
and oftener read the books that are in running brooks ?

But leaving the many good men who have written
books expressly and solely in praise of the gentle art,
and the one or two questionable persons who have ven-
tured a remark on the other side of the dispute, look at
what a mass of testimony wc have in the frequent and
fond allusions of almost all our British poets. With the
already disposed-of exception of Byron, not one English
poet has one disrespectful allusion to the art ; while pas-
sages might be cited from almost all of them showing
that they loved, understood, and practised it. To begin
pretty near the beginning, Spenser draws so many com-
parisons and illustrations from the subject as to show
that, notwithstanding his poverty, his courtiership, and
his official and poetical labours, he had loitered by many

26 THE SALMON.

pleasant water-sides. Tims, in telling that Archimago
could not catch the Eed-Cross Knight by any of the
devices that had once been successful, he expresses him-
self—

" The fisli that once was cauglit new bayt will hardly byte," —

which is a piscatorial fact, not perhaps requiring much
profound knowledge of the art, but still not likely to
suggest itself to any but an angler. It is also another
evidence in favour of Spenser being one of the initiated,
that when he has' occasion to mention any river, he
frequently and needlessly stops to catalogue the kind
of fish to be found in it, — the knowledo-e he is so fond
of displaying on this point ranging over a great part of
Ireland, as well as England. Coming next to Shakspeare,
we confess at once that there is no evidence now extant
of his having been in the habit of taking a day's sport
in the Avon or anywhere else ; but whoever reads any
of those heavy yet unsubstantial books called Lives of
Shakspeare, will find that information is missing about
many other things besides this that yet the Bard must
have done. There are, however, many allusions to ang-
ling scattered throughout Shakspeare, several of them,
we admit, showing no profound knowledge of the sub-
ject. Thus Ursula, in Much Ado about Nothing —

" The pleasantest angling is to see the fish
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,
And greedily devour the treacherous bait."

In the present day, this, so far from being " pleasant," is
not possible angling, for if you see the fish, the fish sees
you, and that's an end of it ; but some allowance may
be made for the fact that this was written in an age
w^lien British fish were in a comparatively primitive

VALUE OF THE SALMON. 27

state of mind, and when man had not yet found out so
many inventions for their destruction. Pope, as appears
both from his poems and the testimony of contemporaries,
was an angler, but only, we fear, a pond and perch man
— speaking enthusiastically of " eyeing the dancing cork
and bending reed." He evidently, however, knew well
the technicalities and nomenclature of the art, and in
his poem of " Windsor Forest" will be found the original
of the descriptive catalogue of fish which SmoUet has
plagiarized in his " Ode to Leven Water." Dryden also
was an angler, and his contemporary Tom Durfey too,
and were jealous of each other on that as well as other
accounts, as we learn from Fenton : —

" By long experience Durfey may, no doubt,
Ensnare a gudgeon or sometimes a trout ;
Yet Dryden once exclaimed in 2)artial sjiite, —
' He Jitili .'' because the man attempts to write."

To name only one more among the poets of that era,
Johnny Gay more than once makes a virtue of confess-
ing himself an angler, and describes the process of secur-
ing a " thumper," in a long and not very successful, but
eminently practical passage. Among poets of the pre-
sent generation, we name only the least likely of them
all, AVordsworth, whose lines descriptive of trout lying
on a blue slate would have shown him not destitute of
all taste and knowledge regarding this subject, even if we
had not Sir Humphry Davy's positive testimony tliat
the poet of the Lakes was " a lover both of fly-fishing
and fly-fishermen."

What other sport, we may now ask, is consecrated
by having been the subject of so mucli poetry and
the delight of so many poets 'i None. Hunting —

28 THE SALMON.

at least the tliino- called liuutiiio- in modern times —
has been left to some nameless song-writers, and to poet
Somerville and such small deer. Shootino- is absolutely
and entirely without a literature. Both are modern and
prosaic. Angling alone is ancient and poetical, and has
been practised, and its praises sung, in all countries and
generations.

Then, passing from poets and poetry, look at the
number and strange variety of the men whom angling is
known to have had and to have amono; its most devoted
followers, — great warriors, fierce politicians, and deep
philosophers. ]\Iighty Nelson was almost as expert and
enthusiastic in fishinoc as in fiorhtino- • and the con-
stancy of his affection for the art is testified by his pa-
thetic remark to a boatswain who had lost his arm at the
same time as himself, " Jack, we're spoilt for fly-fishing,"
and by his afterwards resuming the prosecution of the
sport with his left hand. Everybody knows how Paley,
when asked by his bishop what progress he was making
with his last great work, explained that he would apply
himself steadily to the subject of Natural Theology as
soon as the fly-fishing season was quite over, l)ut certainly
not sooner. Of Sir Humphry Davy's ardour there is no
need to speak ; not even how it once led him to the
water-side in the north of Ireland on a Sunday, where,
says the philosopher, " a man came up, exceedingly drunk,
began to abuse me by various indecent terms, such as a
Sabbath-breaking Papist," and carried off his rod, " with
imprecations ;" nor how, when he went in quest of health
and fish to other lands, he cursed " the blue rushing of the
arrowy Ehone," in which he could scarcely get a " rise "

valup: of the salmon. 29

for want of a " driuiimlt'." Then, to come; to another
class of men, the late Henry Hunt was one of the best
fly-fishers in England, not grudging, in pursuit of the
art, to abandon the glories of demagogism and the
profits of blacking-making. Thomas Doubleday, too, a
dramatic poet of genuine power, and an ingenious writer
on various subjects, who led the fierce democracy of the
English coal districts during the Eeform struggle, is so
devoted a Waltonian that he has, it is said, been known
to address the once dread Northern Union at Newcastle,
with the flies round his hat, and the air of Coquetdale
still fragrant about him. It ought here, however, to be
remarked, that, generally speaking, anglers are not fierce
politicians, but men of quiet and peaceable lives, seeking
solace under wrongs and oppressions in the eminently
practical philosophy which Cotton indited and Walton
endorsed : —

" We scratch not our pates,

Nor repine at the rates
Our superiors impose on our living ;

But do frankly submit,

Knowing they have more wit
In demanding than we have in giving."

Women, too, have been slaves to this fascination,
l)oth in ancient days and in these. Cleopatra, for
instance (but not as instance of an amiable or even
respectable woman), kept her punt on tlie Cydnus,
— " Give me mine angle : we'll to the river ; " but,
like other women, she had a way of her own, and
behaved in a most unsportswomanlike manner in lier
angling competition with Antony, " when her diver did
hang a salt-fish on his hook, which he with fervency
drew up." But why go to other times or to eminent

3(1 THE SALMON.

names ? Almost every man knows among his own
accjuamtances, and especially among the Ijest of them,
of cases in which the love of angling has become, not
only the one recreation, but the absorbing passion of
life. A man is in our mincVs eye who could see nothing
enticing in Milton's description of the celestial abodes,
except where it is said that

" The river of bliss through midst of heaven
Rolls o'er Elysiau flowers her amber stream."

On the other hand, we have heard of a person who was
wont to derive consolation from the item of foreign in-
telligence given by Shakspeare, " Nero is an angler in
the lake of darkness," and who fondly imagined he had
got a " wrinkle" as to the best bait for the river Styx.
This gentleman, however, was afterwards brought to
better behaviour and more cheerful views. And indeed
the cases in which anglers are ever otherwise than good
and cheerful men must evidently be exceptional. To say
otherwise is not only to collide with facts, but to utter
profanity against Nature — to assume that love of her is
compatible and connected with love of cruelty and other
evil things — that there is no virtue in " the impulse
from a vernal wood,"^ — no teaching of love or gentleness
in fragrant fields and cooling waters.

NATUKAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 3 1

CHAPTER li.

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON.

The Parr — Period of Emigration — Period of Immigration — What's a
Grilse 1 — Natural Waste of Salmon Life — What are " Spring Salmon ?"'
— " Fish of the Salmon kind."

The natural history of the Salmon is not only in-
teresting in itself— interesting for what is known and
settled, for what is guessed and controverted, and for
what remains as utter mystery and dire perplexity, — but
is also important as having a bearing upon, or rather
forming an essential part of, the commercial and legis-
lative questions. Without some knowledge of how,
when, and where the fish breeds, dwells, and feeds, it is
useless to speak and unsafe to act. The amount, how-
ever, of positive knowledge, the number of undis]3uted
facts, attainable by inquirers, will not be denied (except
by those who know very little) to be small, in com-
parison with the amount of conjecture and the number
of dogmas. The obvious natural difficulties of the
question have been greatly aggravated by dogmatism,
and, till within about thirty years, have scarcely been
assailed by experiment. There is indeed almost no
subject on which it is easier to dogmatize than the
natural history of almost all kinds of fish, of which so
much is unascertained and probably unascertainable.

32 THE SALMON.

that questions diseiissed by Aristotle are unsettled yet ;
and the salmon, exciting more curiosity than any other
inhabitant of the water, has been more than an)^ other
the object of visionary theories, narrow empiricism,
stiff assertions, easy credulity, and obstinate unbelief —
nay, several questions relating to the salmon have been
discussed with as fierce an intolerance, as resolute a
contempt for facts and reason, as much heat and as
little profit, as if they had been questions in theology.
A fiivourable field for all this was afforded by the natural
difficulties in the way of investigation, or at least of
ascertainment. The fish can be but obscurely and occa-
sionally observed by man during one-half of the year,
and during the other is not only invisible as to its
habits, but is quite unknown as to its residence — after
the salmon has left the rivers, we are ignorant not only
of what he is doino- but of where he has 2fone. Ditfi-
culties like these are to certain classes of people facilities.
Sciolism plunges in where science is perplexed, and
" practical men," with their few half-facts gathered from
a merely local experience, are full of that certainty
which is exorcised from the inquirer in proportion as
he extends and deepens his investigations. The nonsense
about the salmon that has been pul^lished under the
name of natural history, and tlirust dos^n the throats
of Parliamentary Committees, is, when looked back
upon, appalling in amount, variety, and wort hlessn ess.
To read some people's deliverances on the subject, they
might seem to have collected their materials durino' a
lengthened subaqueous residence, and to have come
back speaking with a more than earthly authority. If,

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 33

indeed, a deputation of those omniscient authors and
witnesses could be induced to stay below water for a
few months, going down, say in November, taking their
seat where they could observe the deposition and de-
velopment of the ovn, — •" sitting under the glassy, cool,
translucent wave," — accompanying their charge to the
sea, and returning to their native element in autum.n,
saturated with information, they would then, but not
till then, be competent to speak with the authority some
of them have assumed. There are, of course, difficulties
in the way of such a commission of inquiry ; but, look-
ing at the uselessness, and often mischievousness, of the
magisterial manner in which many people handle the
question, one is almost tempted to say, there would
be no harm in trying. In questions regarding the
natural history of the salmon, it will almost always be
found, except with regard to one or two points settled
by adequate experiment, that those people who have
seen most are inclined to say least, and that those who
have thought most are most at a loss what to think.

The chief questions are, or have been, four in num-
ber : — 1st, Is the Parr the young of the Salmon in
earliest infancy ? 2d, At what age does the Smolt
emigrate to salt water ? od, After what length of
absence does the emigrant return to fresh water ? -Ith,
In what shape does he return, " Grilse" or Salmon ?

It has happened, not unluckily, but rather super-
fluously, that the most decisive experiments in tlie
natural history of the salmon have been directed to
that point which was most capable of settlement by

34 THE .SALMON.

ordiuary observation. That the parr i« the infant young
of the sahnon was a fact so clear, or a conclusion so
inevitable, before the experiments were made, that it
would now be hard to conceive how it could ever have
been in doubt, were it not that, even after the experiments
have furnished the most ample demonstration, there
are still to be found a considerable number of people
who, instead of having been convinced, have only been
enraged. A good deal, however, of the former, and
almost all of the remaining confusion, arises from differ-
ences in names and mistakes as to identity — the parr
being known by many different names in different
localities, and some of these names being in some dis-
tricts and by some people apphed to such river trouts
as happen, which is a frequent case, to bear marks
resembling one of the distinctive marks of the parr.
Even two hundred years ago (when such matters re-
ceived but scant attention), this confusion of names
was matter of observation and complaint. AVe find it
alluded to in a curious, though, by reason of its pedantry
and priggishness, rather unreadable book, by " Kichard
Franck, Philanthropus," a Cromwellian trooper, who
made an angling tour through a great part of Scotland
about the middle of the seventeenth century, and pub-
lished his experiences under the title of Northern Me-
moirs, without obtaining almost any attention till 1821,
when the volume was reprinted with a preface and notes
by Sir Walter Scott. Speaking of " the various names
given in England to the hi'ood of salmon," he says : —
" Now, in the South, tliey call him samlet, but if you
step to the AVest, he is better known tliore Ijy the name

NATUKAJ. HLSTOllV OF 'I'HE 8ALMUx\. 35

of skegger ; when in the East they avow him penk ; but
to northward, brood and loeksper ; so from thence to a
tecon ; then to a sahnon." About the same period,
Izaak Walton enumerates the names of samlet, skegger,
and tecon as names of the young of the salmon, im-
agining them, lioweve]', to be the young of three different
species of salmon ; and he tells us that he knew [hj
hearsay) of experiments on this point made before his
day, not dissimilar in mode, object, and results to some
that have been made in our own. Thus : " It is said,
that after he is got into the sea, he Ijecomes from a sam-
let, not so big as a gudgeon, to be a salmon, in so short
a time as a gosling becomes to l^e a goose. Much of
this has been observed by tying a ribbon or some known
tape or thread in the tail of some young salmons which
have been taken in weirs as they have swimmed towards
the salt water, and then by taking a part of them again
with the known mark at the same place at their re-
turn from the sea, which is usually about six months
after." Again, a hundred years later, we have Caj^tain
Burt (an English engineer officer, who resided in the
Highlands between the two Jacobite Eebellious, and
wrote a book still of great value and interest), when
referring to the river Ness, speaking thus : — " There is
great plenty of a small fish the people call a little trout,
but of another species, and is exceeding good, called in
the north of England a branlin. Then they are so like
the salmon frye, that they are hardly to be distinguished,
only the skals come off the frye in handling, the others
have none." Burt failed to see that the branlin and the
" frye" are the same fish in different stages, and to note

36 THE SALMON.

the fact that no fish are born with a silver scale or
migratory dress, but assume it only a short time before
they go seaward. The English Fisheries' Act of 1861
includes all the names above given as local names for
the young of the salmon, except " locksper" and " tecon,"
mentions many more names, and comprehends besides
" all local names," anywhere in use, though not specified
in the Act. Such difficulties, however, as arose from
this confusion of nomenclature would have been easily
enough got over if the controversialists had really
been seeking for truth instead of contending for victory,
and had been willing to believe what any oljservant man
could plainly see.

About ten years before what were really the first
decisive experiments, Mr. Scrope {Days and Nights of
Salmon Fishing) wrote a long letter to the Eight Hon.
T. F. Kennedy, M.P,, who had then a Bill relating to
the salmon-fisheries before the House of Commons, in
which the theory, or rather fact, that the parr is the
young of the salmon, was stated with positiveness, and
argued with great clearness and force. Mr. Scrope, of
course, could only proceed upon the facts he had ob-
served in the rivers — but these ought to have been
enough— such as the absence of parrs from all l)ut sal-
mon rivers, the disappearance of the larger parrs after
May, and the finding, in spring, of the distinctive marks
of the parr under the silver scales of the smolt. Sir
David Brewster, also, having made an examination at
the request of Mr. Scrope, gave his testimony that the
eye of the parr has a formation precisely the same as
that of the salmon, and quite different from that of the

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 37

trout. About eight years later, and still previous to the
decisive experimeuts, James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd,
gave the world some very good reasons of his own for
holdiug the parr to be the young of the salmon, — reasons
founded on observation and experience, partly on his
having observed the gradual assumption of the migra-
tory dress by the parr in the spring months, partly on his
having caught as grilse fish which he had marked when
parr, or when in their transition-state from parr to smolt.
This, however, had little effect, beyond raising a crop of
jokes about the license of poets in general, and of poet
Hogg in particular. The fact is, that the brothers of
the angle, especially the elder brethren, though the best
of men, are rather addicted to stiffness in opinion as to
things connected with the art. Almost every man had,
till withiii these few years, his own theory as to the
salmon and the pari-, which stood well enough, in so far
as it was no more unnatural and irrational than any of
the half-dozen theories of the half-dozen neighbours with
whom he had debated, and which he probably clung to all
the closer that it was purely and strictly his oivn, having
no source in search, experiment, or even what could be
fairly called observation. Amidst all these self-satisfied,
and only self-satisfied theorists, Mr. Shaw — head-keeper
to the Duke of Buccleuch at Drumlanrig Castle — ap-
peared, in 1836, with his measurements, his plates, and
his dates, the result of careful and repeated experiments
— and almost instantly the whole tribe turned on him as
a common enemy. Even had there been no proof l^y ex-
periment, it would have given a most unfavourable idea
of the amount of candour, or perviousness to conviction,

THE SALMON.

existing among those who, whether from a popular or a
scientific point of view, have debated this question, to
find that the denial of the parr being the young of the
salmon was maintained for so many years in the face of
these among other facts — that where there are no salmon
there are no parr, and vice versa ; that where the salmon
are artificially debarred from a river which they have
been " accustomed to ascend, the parr disappear along
with them ; that the young of the salmon' at the time
when they are the size of parr, are otherwise unaccounted
for ; and that parr, besides not growing as parr, are
never seen to breed, nor are fmnd with developed roe.
We defy any man to find a parr in a river to which
salmon have not access, or a salmon in a river where
there are no parrs ; and we could, of our own knowledge,

J name a score of waters where parrs abound up to some
obstruction, natural or artificial, impassable by salmon,
and are c[uite unknown aljove it ; and also several where
parrs used to be plentiful, l)ut where, since the con-
struction of insurmountable dams, they have disappeared.
All this is notorious, and was known as a popular and
established fact even to Izaak AValton, who, though he
knew little about salmon, knew that he had never met
with parrs save in salmon-rivers. The fact at least
proves, that in some way a communication with the sea
is necessaiy to the existence of the parr ; and, if it is a
distinct species, how comes it that no one ever saw, or
ever said he saw, parrs, as parrs, emigrating or immi-

I grating ? But JMr. Young of Invershin, Sutherland- \
shire (who has some disciples) seems to attempt to stifle >
this difficulty by speaking of the parr as a " river-trout,"

J /..•

Ce^.. ^^yO t^^-t^ /^ >v,,/ A7.

J

NATURAL HrSTORY OF THE SALMON. 89

meaning, we presume, a trout that has no connexion
with the sea, although, by a universal " coincidence," it
does not live anywhere without that connexion. Even
here, however, another difficulty greater than the other
rises before him. Did he ever see two parrs spawning ?
Did he ever see a female parr with a developed roe ? He
never did, and never will. He may see indeed, among the
endless varieties of hues and marks exhibited by com-
mon or fresh-water trouts, some trouts having mottles or
finger-marks resembling those upon the parr, and ex-
ercising all the functions of adult fish, but for all that
a mottled trout is no more a parr than a spotted salmon
is a trout. Fortunately, however, this point, unlike
some others in the natural history of the salmon, not
only admits of demonstration by seeing and handling,
but has been demonstrated long ago, and over and
over again.

About thirty years ago, Mr. Shaw transferred some
parrs from the river Nith to a pond that he had pre-
pared for the purpose ; and after a certain period they
assumed the migratory dress and movements — in other
words, became transformed or transcoloured into salmon
smolts. Here it was proved that the parr is the infant
of the salmon, unless indeed it was to he denied that
smolts are the youth of the salmon, in due time be-
coming salmon themselves. Next, Mr. Shaw, watching
till a pair of salmon had deposited their ova in a stream
of the Nith, transferred the ova to an artificial stream
connected with his pond ; and after a time the eggs were
hatched, and the produce was parrs. Here it was proved
that the salmon is the parent of the parr, just as com-

■iU THE SALMON.

pletely as it can be proved that cocks and hens are the
parents of chickens. The case was thus proved from
both ends — the parr was shown to be the salmon in
infancy, and the sahuon to be the parr in maturity.
However, to make this double assurance trebly sure, Mr.
Shaw caught in the river two salmon about to spawn,
and having expressed their spawn within his own watery
precincts, the result again in due time was parrs. Twenty
years afterwards, similar experiments, on a larger scale,
and with the same results, were made at the experi-
mental and breeding ponds, Stormontfield, on the Tay,
where parrs, and nothing but parrs, were hatched from
the ova of salmon by hundreds of thousands ; and those
experiments have been repeated at the same place with
the same results in every one of the last ten years. No
man has ever shown that anything else is ever produced
from salmon-ova but parrs, nor that parrs are ever pro-
duced from anything else l^ut salmon-ova, and until this
is at least pretended to be done, no more is needed
to be said.

The question as to the age at which the young fish
emerges from the parr stage, and assumes the appearance
and habits of the smolt, has been disputed more ration-
ally ; and though it has also been made the subject of
experiment, cannot yet be regarded as quite decided — or
if so, the decision, according to our view, is to the effect
that the disputants on both sides are about equally
wrong and equally right. Let us trace the growth of
the young fish ah ovo as far as it was made visible liy
the experiments of the seasons 1853-54 (which have not
been found to differ from other seasons), in the Stor-

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 41

niontfield ponds. Ova were deposited on the 23d of
November ; by the end of March the fish began to issue
from the eggs ; and that process was entirely completed
before the end of May — the hatching thus appearing to
require from about 90 to 130 days, a result agreeing
with that arrived at by Mr. Shaw ; but the length of this
period may be regarded as depending very much on
various circumstances, especially the temperature of the
water, as varying with each season and with the month
in which the ova happened to be deposited. There is
agreement this far, and also this much further, that the
fish hatched, say in March, remain in the river (though,
partly from minuteness, partly from shyness, rarely
visible before July) until April or May of the following
year — that is, till from between thirteen and fifteen
months after they have left the egg. It is here that the
question arises. Does the parr assume the migratory dress
and movements then, or a year afterwards ; i c, at the
age of about one year and two months, or at the age of
about two years and two months ? The doubt on this
point, oddly enough, was incidentally raised, though it
was also claimed to have been settled, by Mr. Shaw.
When he l^egan his experiments, he had in view only
the question as to the identity of the parr and the young
of the salmon, and would appear to have had no doubt
that the young of the salmon descended to the sea in the
spring of the year following that in which they had been
born ; and the facts apparently to the contrary, and also
another and now apparently undisputed discovery, re-
garding the apparently premature sexual maturity of
male parrs, came upon him, so to speak, by accident and

42 THE SALMON.

surprise. He found that the parr in his ponds remained
unchanged and stationary during the second year of their
existence, but assumed the migratory dress after enter-
ing on their third year ; and that in its second wintei*,
being then in its eighteenth or twentieth month, the

i male parr (alone) arrives at sexual^ maturity, and does,

j or can, impregnate the ova of the adult female salmon.

) It will he seen at once that there were two points here
almost inviting attack — that as to the young of the

' salmon remaining two years before migration, and that
as to the precocious and anomalous development of the
young male. But because there was in both cases an
appare7it anomaly, were we bound to conclude, as many
people did, and even do, that there was an actual error ?
On the contrary, we were bound to give j^Ir. Shaw's
statements and reasonings the more respectful considera-
tion when we found that he had as it were endangered
the reception of the great truth which his experiments
settled — that the parr is the young of the salmon — by
adding two startling statements on other points, simply
because they had been evolved in the course of his in-
quiries. It shows at least that he entered on and con-
ducted his experiments, not to maintain a theory, but to
discover the truth.

It may simplify tlip discussion, to dispose at once and
in a few words of the subordinate or incidental cjuestion
of the impregnation of the ova of the female adult salmon
by the milt of the male parr. Of course there is an ap-
parent anomaly in the system thus alleged to exist in

\ the salmon race, of marriage between couples where the
husl)anrl measures only about as many inches as the wife

NATUKAL HISTOKV UV THE SALMON. 4P>

f measures feet. But one part, at least, of the apparent
anomaly is on all hands admitted to be fact — every
observant angler knows, and the chief challengers of Mr.
Shaw's conclusion do not deny, that male parrs do and
that female parrs do not attain to sexual maturity. This
being got over, there is little difficulty in believing what
remains — on the contrary, the sexual maturity of the
young male must be regarded as conferred by nature for
a purpose and not as a freak. That purpose Mr. Shaw
maintained to be the impregnation of the roe of the
female salmon, and he maintained it, not because he had
dreamed or preconceived it, but because, when looking-
for something else, he had seen it. And often since his
time, what he saw doing in the river, and \\'hat he after-
wards did in his preserves, has been done with unques-
tioned results in the experimental streams and ponds —
the roe of the adult female salmon, suffused with the
milt of the male parr, generated, just as if sutilised with
the milt of the male adult salmon ; and the roe of female
salmon, suffused with the milt of any other fish, or left
unsuffused as it came from the female, did not generate
■ — so that there is botli proof positive and proof negative.

Coming to the more important and more controverted
question, whether the parr migrates at the beginning of
its second or of its third year, the apparent anomaly of
the theory that it does not descend either in the first
migratory season after its birth nor in the next again, is
in great part, if not entirely removed by a more or less
fatal admission of those by whom the theory is disputed.
Formerly, a pretty prevalent creed was that the ])arr

44 THE SALMON.

migrated in its first year; but that is now quite exploded.
Almost all the writers against Mr. Shaw maintain that
the migration takes place at the commencement of the
second year ; that is, that heing hatched in March or
April, the parr descends to the sea in May twelvemonth.
It is thus admitted that it does not avail itself of the
first season of migration occurring after it has been left
to its own resources and instincts. Now, is not this as
much of what we, in our ignorance of the natural history
of fish, regard as an anomaly, as is the staying over a
second season of migration ? The question, then, must
be considered without any regard to apparent anomalies,
and decided only on the evidence of experiment and
observation.

Apart from the experiments that have been made
under circumstances permitting the closest observation,
there is a fact observable in all salmon rivers, which, if
it docs not fully establish, remarkably coincides with the
two years' theory. In the months of May, June, and
July, full-sized parrs are to be got in the rivers, but in
numbers much smaller than in either the preceding or
the following months of the year. This, it will be seen,
fits in exactly to the two years' hypothesis, which says
that multitudes of the fish hatched two years before, and
which were parrs in March and April, descend in May as
smolts, and that the fish which were hatched that same
year remain till autumn of diminutive size and retiring-
habits, — so that the parrs seen in the rivers in the months
of May, June, and July, are mainly those only of the
previous year's hatching, i.e., of from thirteen to sixteen
months of age — those of a year older than that Jiaving

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 45

just descended, and those a year younger having not
generally begun to feed at large and show themselves to
the angler or investigator. Unless the one-year party
are prepared to maintain that the young fish attain to
something like full parr size, and move about freely in
search of food, within a few weeks of their birth, it would ;
be hard for them to account for the fact that parrs are
seen in the rivers in considerable quantity during the
summer months, after the brood of the former year have,
according to the one-year theory, gone do^7n to the sea.
Nevertheless, all this, if forming a strong presumption
against the one year theory, is not conclusive in favour
of the two-years' theory ; for the facts are reconcilable
also, and even more completely, with what may be called
the half-and-half or mixed theory, which the weight of
the evidence derived from experiments goes directly to
support.

One or two of the facts yielded by Mr. Shaw's experi-
ments, and cited (not by himself) as evidence on this point,
seem to us defective — those, for instance, in which parrs
transferred from the river to the ponds in July put on
a migratory dress the next April, for there were no
certain means of knowing what was the age of the fish
when transferred. The evidence, which equally satisfied
and surprised Mr. Shaw, and which alone is admissible,
was drawn from the case of the fish hatched in his own
preserve, and kept under his own eye, from their birth
till their migration. The fish which came out of the
ova at Drumlanrig, in the spring of 1837, did not
assume the migratory dress, and seek to depart in May
1838, as Mr. Shaw had expected, but did so in May

^

46 THE SALMON.

1839. That was a fact, the fact ; and the same resuU
was arrived at by experiments made in 1859 by Mr.
Ramsbottom, at DoohuUa, in Gal way. It was the fact,
but the question remained, Was it the only fact, and
irreconcilable with other facts ascertained or supposable ?
A great deal of argument was brought at the time
against the result which Mr. Shaw appeared to have
evolved ; but for a long time the argument was based only
on probabilities and analogies, and not on actual know-
ledge. There was, indeed, a sort of exception in the
case of Mr. Andrew Young of Invershin, who conducted
similar experiments, leading him, as he rather too eagerly
and positively declared, to the conclusion, that the parrs
descend shortly after the expiry of the first year. Mr.
Young's e\'idence, however, was to a great extent vitiated
by two causes. He failed to give an adequate account
of the conditions under which his experiments were
carried on, — the construction of the ponds, the care
taken to prevent the mixing of broods, the constancy
of the watch kept over tlie growth ; in short, he omitted
everything that rendered Mr. Shaw's contributions to
the question valuable and interesting. On one side,
therefore, we have the evidence of an experimenter who
told us minutely all he had done ; and on the other, the
evidence of an experimenter who declined to tell any-
thing but that he had made experiments. Further, Mr.
Young had, rather oddly and unluckily, told the Royal
Society of Edinburgh, in 1843, that he "entirely agreed"
with Mr. Shaw ; whilst the experiments on which he
founded his subsequently expressed entire disagreement
with Mr. Shaw, were made in 1841. However, the

NATURAl. HLSTUilY OF THE SAJ>MOK. 47

point might lisixa l)ceii regarded us still open to dispute,
and it was, by a sort of common though tacit assent, laid
over for decision by the larger and completer experi-
ments carried on at Stormontfield,

To the surprise if not the discomfiture of both parties,
Stormontfield decided both ways, or neither way. The
ova deposited in the end of 1853, were hatched in the
spring of 1854, and the produce continued in the pond as
paiTs cfuring the summer of that year. May 1855 was
the time at which the movements of the young fish must
decide the question. If Young was right in saying one
year, they would then go off" ; if Shaw was right in
saying two yeiirs, they would still remain. The result
was perplexing : one-half, as nearly as could be esti-
mated7~went off" at one year old, and the other half at
two years {i.e., in May 1856). Here, besides both
parties having been proved wrong and both right, was
another apparent anomaly : those people who had been
arguing or admitting that there was something ano-
malous in the fish remaining two years before emigra-
tion, were shown something much more anomalous in
the fish going off" in two apparently pretty equal divi-
sions at ages diff^3ring l>y a year. When it thus seemed
so far ascertained that only half tlie fish migrated, a new
hypothesis was brought out, to the effect that the females
descend the first year and the males the second. This
suggestionTwas not only supported by some curious facts
drawn from experience on the river Wharfe, in York-
shire^ Ijut it also " fitted in" to the fact, as already
mentioned, found by Mr. Shaw in his expeiiments,
besides agreeing with the observations of intelligent

48 THE SALMON.

anglers, and propounded so far back as 1686 {De His-
toria Piscium, by Eae and Willoiigliby), that the male
of the young salmon comes to sexual maturity in its parr
state. The hypothesis, however, was crushed by fts ap-
pearing on investigation that the fish remaining during
the second year consisted of both males and females, the
milts of the males being fully developed, while the roe
of the females was discernible only by a microscope.
Thus in the end (for it seems the end), the disputants
on this point have been left all in the wrong, or all in
the right, and consequently a large proportion of them
on both sides not only disappointed, but unconvinced.

To account for the double or mixed response of the
Stormontfield oracle to the question between the one-
year and the two-year theories, doubts have been raised
by the partisans of both views, whether the circumstances
under which the fish were reared in and let out of the
pond, were not such as to render the results unreliable
as indications of what would have taken place had the
fish been in their natural position and freedom, — one side,
of course, maintaining that these circumstances acceler-
ated, and the other that they retarded, the natural growth
and movements. It was said of JMr. Shaw's experiments
that the two-years' fresh-water residence of the fry was
ascribable to the " difference of temperature between the
waters of the Nith, from which the ova were taken, and
the waters of the ponds in which they were hatched and
reared." But where is the evidence as to what was the
difference in temperature, or whether there was any at
all ? On inspecting ]\Ir, Shaw's Observations for in-
formation on this point, we can only find that the tern-

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 49

perature of the ponds, as compared with that of the
river, was on one occasion three degrees below, and on
another six degrees above. So whatever difference there
was, seems to have been in favour of the pond stimulat-
ing, not retarding, as compared with the river or natural
hal^itat. But suppose it were otherwise, wdiat then ?
We know that a lower temperature might retard the
hatching of the fry by a week or two, or their growth
by half an inch or lialf an ounce ; but we have no
ground for supposing that it would retard for a whole
year such a change as that of assuming the migratory
dress — taking place, as that does, at a fixed season of
each year — especially as the fact of that change not
being dependent on size, development, or condition, is
evidenced by the great difference in all these respects
observable among the descending smolts. Again, on the
one hand, it has been argued that the young fish at Stor-
montfield were probably not sufficiently fed, else they
might all have arrived at the migratory stage the first
year ; but it is also said, and with fully as much show of
reason, that as the fish were regularly fed with " boiled
liver rubbed small," besides their natural supplies from
the surface and the bottom, it is supposable that but for
that none of them would have developed the migratory
instinct until the second year. Still further, it is said
that if the fish had been in the open river, subject to the
influences of floods, they would have descended the first
year ; but yet again it is replied, and with at least
equal show of reason, that if the fish had not been led,
or encou.raged, or almost driven out of the ponds, none
of them would have removed the first year.

D

50 THE SALMON.

It will be thus seen, that the parties struggling
against the Stormontfield decision differ mainly on the
matter of fact whether the conditions of the experimental
ponds were such as to stimulate or to retard the growth
of the fish's instincts — whether, as Mr. Thomas Stoddart
expressed it, " that, being kept in a state of comparative
confinement, they had their growth stinted and their in-
stincts overruled ;" or whether, as others maintain, by
living in a warmer climate, by being better supplied
with food, and by getting, as it were, an " assisted pass-
age" as emigrants, they had not their growth hastened
and their instincts prematurely developed. Both parties
really proceed more or less necessarily in ignorance or
assumption of the actual facts, the probabilities, how-
ever, preponderating considerably in favour of those who
maintain that the ponds must have a stimulating effect.
Both parties also assume that the temperature of the
water, the supply of food, and the ease or difficulty of
egress, affect one way or other, to the extent of exactly a
year, certain natural changes, for which it would seem
more rational to assume that nature had appointed an
unchangeable season. That gro\\i;h, and even sexual
maturity, could be affected to such an extent by such
means is quite credible ; but, as we have before sug-
gested, it is not so easy to believe that such influences
could alter by a whole year the time fixed by nature for
not only turning from brown to white, but for removing
from fresh water into salt. By far the most probable
conclusion is, that the peculiar circumstances of the
ponds did not operate one way or the other, but that
we have been seeing in them just what goes on every
year in the open river.

NATUKAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 51

A small difficulty or doubt, however, affecting the
half-and-half theory, remains even after we have accepted
as decisive all that the ponds have told us. Though we
know that some of the year-olds left the ponds for the
river, wo do not know that they left the river for
the sea. Placed between the conflicting assertions of the
two parties, the inquirer may naturally ask, Had the
young fish that left the ponds, after the close of their
first year, the migratory dress and habits, or had they
not ? For if they had, their departure was obviously a
regular process of nature ; if they had not, their leaving
the pond would not be sufficient evidence of their inten-
tion then to proceed to the sea. Here, unfortunately,
the accounts of the first and best known experiment
were somewhat conflicting. On the 2d May 1855 {i.e.
when, on the one-year hypothesis, the time of migra-
tion had arrived), the fish in the ponds were examined
l)y a highly competent committee, including Lord Mans-
field and the late Mr. James Wilson the naturalist, and
the decision was that they were 7wt ready to descend.
But on the 19 th of the same month, there was a meeting
of a portion of the committee, at which it was agreed
that the fish ire7'e ready to descend. The grounds on
which this latter conclusion was come to, do not appear
to us to have sufficient extent or certainty. The prin-
cipal fact mentioned is, that twelve of the fish were
taken by the rod, and that, out of these, five were, ac-
cording to the judgment of the persons present, in a
migratory condition. These seem rather slender data on
which to arrive at and put in force so large a conclusion,
especially as even Mr. Shaw had stated tliat he had

52 THE SALMON.

found a few individual exceptions to his second-year
theory, and as the advancing season, witli its increased
supplies of food, does give to all kinds of fish a clearer
complexion or gayer coat, which might in many cases
be mistaken, especially by those not disinclined to the
discovery, for the sea-going garb of the smolt. Further,
when the second year came round, it was found that the
remaining fish had changed their appearance by the 26 th
of April {i.e., a week earlier than the time when no such
symptoms could be detected in the fish of one year old) ;
they were going off in shoals by the 28th of April, and
were all gone before the 24th of May— the migration of
the fish of two years old being thus finished at a period
of the season at which fish of one year had, according to
the statements of the one-year champions themselves,
scarcely begun to show the slightest symptoms of change.
This was a fact pretty strong against the one-year theor-
ists, but it was liable to the deduction or doubt arising
from the great difierence of seasons as to temperature ;
and the facts of the years that have passed since go to
confirm the observations and twofold conclusions of the
first year of the experiments. These facts have been
most carefully noted and clearly recorded by Mr. Robert
Buist of Perth, a gentleman who, from his long experience,
his powers of observing, and his caution in coming to
decisions, has done much service in the matter of the
salmon, both as to natural history and commercial in-
terests. The results, then, to which the evidence of the
Stormontfield ponds seems to lead, in the question as to
the period at which the young of the salmon makes its
first migration, are chiefly these : one-half of the young

NATURAL HISTORY OJ^^ THE SALMON. 53

fish emigrate after the end of the first, the other half
after the end of the second year ; the date of departure
varies to the extent of weeks in different years according
to the temperature ; and, cceteris paribus, the two-year-
olds go off a week or two earlier in spring than the one-
year-olds.

Although, on the whole, the evidence must, we think,
be held as thus establishing that one-half of the young fish
descend at one year, and the other half at two years of
age, still if this compromise is not accepted, and a de-
cision one way or the other is insisted upon, then it must
be held that by far the weightiest and best tested evi-
dence is in favour of two years. For, while there are
doubts and disputes (at least as to the first experiment)
in what degree the fish that left the first year exhibited
the migratory instinct, there is no doubt whatever that
a full half of the fish did not then exhibit any symptom
of migrativeness, but declined all invitations to remove
until the second year.

The third question, AVhether the young of the salmon,
after descending as a smolt, ascends that same season or
the next, has been rather raised than laid by some rather
loose experiments, which is the more to be regretted, as
its settlement would also have conduced very greatly to
the settlement of the preceding point, as to the age at
which the smolt descends. If, at the experiment first
made, a portion of the Stormontfield smolts, supposed
to have descended to the sea at one year old, had been
sufficiently marked, and some of them been captured
that same season after their return from the sea, it
would have been made certain, both that the one-year-

54 THE SALMON.

old smolts that left the pond had descended to the sea,
and that their residence there extended to only a few
weeks. But — probably because this point did not in-
volve the chief or primary object of the experiments —
care was not taken at first to manage so as to bring
about anything that can be safely regarded as a decision.
Of the smolts that left the pond the first year, between
1200 and 1300 were marked by -cutting the second
dorsal fin, and of these 2 2 are stated to have been caught
as grilse that same season ; of those that left the pond
the second year, 1135 were marked by cutting the tail,
and of these " several" are reported to have been caught
as grilse in the course of their season ; and Mr. Buist has
reported similar results in more recent years. Such facts
must of course reckon as something ; but there are several
serious deficiencies in the evidence on that side, and
some very formidable facts on the other. No firm faith
can be placed in the system of marking by cuts — any
one that, by examining the heaps of fish as they are
tumbled from the nets, or by any other means, has had
an opportunity of observing the great number and in-
finite variety of marks and maimings produced for the
most part, it would appear, from encounters with marine
enemies, will have a strong distrust of any such tests.
It is not enough, we submit, that out of .the 30,000 or
40,000 grilse caught in the Tay in 1855, twenty-two
had an abscission on a certain fin, such as was inflicted
on 1100 of the smolts of that year ; it might perhaps
have been as possible to find among the 40,000 twenty-
two individuals with a cut on their tails similar to that
Avhich was not inflicted on the smolts till the next year.

NATUllAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 55

It lias also to be taken into account that, on the Tweed
and other rivers, a variety of experiments by cutting had
been going on for years, and that some of the fish
operated on elsewhere might have wandered into the
Tay. If cutting were to be relied upon at all, it should
be not a mere slice, which the teeth of a seal or porpoise
may accidentally imitate with complete success, but
something peculiar, and, so to say, complicated and
inimitable, such as the perforations on railway-tickets
(o 000 (^2,). While the evidence in favour of the ascent
being made in the same season as the descent is thus
wanting in positiveness, there is evidence very positive
in quality, though small in quantity, to the opposite
effect. Of all the smolts marked by the attachment of
rings or other effective means, whether in the Tay or
other rivers, no7ie have been got, as either grilse or
salmon, the first year, and several have been got the
second year. Of the Stormontfield smolts of the second
year — descending in spring 1856 — 300 (in addition
to the 1135 which were cut) were marked by silver
rings ; and of these none were got. It is quite possible
indeed that all of the 300 that escaped their enemies in
the sea, or even, we will suppose, the entire 300, "no
wanderer lost," may have returned to the Tay as grilse
that season, and yet none of them have chanced to be
caught. But from other quarters we have what seems posi-
tive evidence in favour of the second season. In various
years a great number of Tweed smolts were marked by
a silver wire passed through and fastened to the back
part of their tails ; none of them were got as grilse or
salmon the season they were marked, but the next season

56 THE SALMON.

several of them were caught as most indubitable grilses.
Still later, experiments on the Tweed, apparently on a
smaller scale, but conducted with great care, have brought
out the same results. The Duke of Roxburghe has pre-
served in his possession a fish which was marked as
a smolt by the insertion of a peculiarly-shaped wire
tlu'ough his gills on the 14th May 1855, and which was
caught on July 21st of the following year as a grilse,
weighing 6 J lbs. The more recent experiments of Mr.
Eamsbottom, at DoohuUa, have also gone to support
the doctrine that the fish does not return until after
from thirteen to fifteen months in the sea ; smolts turned
out of the nursery -ponds, and marked in May 1862,
having been caught as grilse in June, July, and August
1863, though there is in this case a possibility that the
smolts may have been turned out before they were ready
to emigrate, and may, after their expulsion, have spent
in the river one of the two years which Mr. Eamsbottom
assumes that they spent in the sea. To what conclu-
sion, then, on this point do the experiments conduct us 1
To nothing absolutely certain ; but as a probability,
supported by evidence small in amount, but strong in
quality, to this, that some at least of the smolts do not
ascend as grilse, or as an}i;hing else, till next year, or
fifteen months after their descent ; and as another pro-
bability, supported by evidence greater in amount, but
not so strong in quality, that some of them return the
first year, or three months after descent. It may thus
be that both views are correct (and here let us state
that the merit of having raised wholesome doubts and
intelligent objections to the generally accepted same-

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 57

season theory lies with the hxte Mr. W. Paulin of
Berwick) ; but giving proper weight to the consideration
that most of the ascertained facts, as distinguished from
the disputable ones, go to support the second-season
theory, that side has perhaps a present advantage in
the controversy. The actual evidence in favour of the
second-season view might be supplemented by arguing
that, as a grilse weighs more pounds than a smolt does
ounces, or, in other words, has increased in weight about
twentyfold, it is more rational to suppose that that great
change took place in fifteen than in three months ; but
even the keenest partisan of the second-season theory
ought to forego that advantage, it being desirable in such
questions to proceed only upon what has been seen or
ascertained, not on what may be only reasonably con-
jectured or even logically inferred.

On the other hand, there is one fact affording
a very strong presumption in favour of the same-
season theorists, which we put separately, because the
fact, though quite unquestioned, does not amount to
actual demonstration on the point in dispute. Grilses
invariably ascend two or three months after the smolts
of that season have descended ; or, to state it in an-
other form, there are no grilse until the smolts have
been some time departed. Now, if grilse have been a
preceding winter and summer in the sea, why should
the time of their ascent bear so rigidly fixed a relation
to the time of the descent of the smolts, when we find
that the adult salmon, which is, or has always been held
to be, the same fish one year older, makes its ascent in
some proportion in every month of the twelve ?

58 THE SALMON.

But liere we are brought up with a jerk, so to speak,
by the new and startling question. Is the grilse a grown
and transmuted salmon-smolt ; or, in other words, is a
grilse an adolescent salmon ? Till lately, there was no
question about it,— it was held that the smolt returned
as a grilse, and that the grilse was simply a virgin-salmon,
or a salmon on its first ascent. Lately, how^ever, these
assumptions have been strongly assailed — first questioned
in a book, and then pronounced upon in an authoritative
way by a Committee of the Commissioners of the river
Tweed, who say, in their Eeport (1863), "Our opinion,
from the experience of the last twenty years, is, that grilses
never become salmon of any stage whatever." This is an
audacious and almost unheard-of heresy. It could scarcely
be said to have ventured into the light till a year or two
ago, when a Ross-shire laird, a salmon controversialist
by hereditary descent, inflamed with what he thought a
great discovery, " came rushing from his mountain home,"
and hurled a biggish book, charged with heretical matter,
among a generation all sections of which had been
accustomed to accept the old orthodox doctrine as l)e-
yond doubt or question.

Great was the astonishment, and just the indigna-
tion, of the baker's wife in " Candide," on hearing that
there was a man down stairs who hesitated to declare
his belief in the fact of the Pope being Antichrist. But
what was that display of unbelief to some which we are
doomed to witness in this bold and sceptical age ? Here
was a man — a Man of Ross — who actually hesitated to
declare his belief in the popular and accepted fact of a
Grilse Ijeiug a young Salmon. Nay, worse ; that luck-

NATURAL HISTOKY OF THE SALMON. 59

less prig Caiidide did not, in dealing with the baker's
wife, venture on any counter proposition, but simply
declined to enter on the Catholic question at all, on the
preposterous plea (destructive of half the controversies
which enliven the world) that he knew nothing about
it, whilst he did know that he was starving, and that
the lady's husband was a baker, whom he had just heard
make an eloquent speech in praise of charity. But our
heretical friend, Mr. Mackenzie of Dundonnell, went the
length of an entire denial of the orthodox ichthyological
creed, and greatly aggravated his offence by showing
that he did know a good deal about the matter regarding
which he had arrived at such unhappy opinions. Indeed,
the heresy Was so bold and wanton as almost to justify
suspicions as to the motives of the heretic. To " make
a reputation," it is perhaps a surer way to table a nega-
tive of something that everybody has taken as unques-
tionable, than to discover something positive that nobody
had thought of If a man were to arise, preaching that
ducklings do not become ducks, nor leverets hares, nor
lambs sheep, he would, according to what has hitherto
been the scientific, and almost equally the popular
apprehension, be in much the same position as that in
which this undaunted northern placed himself. What if
Dundonnell has been actuated, not by a reckless zeal for
what he conceived to be the truth, Imt rather by a burn-
ing thirst for fame ? AVhat if he has been only frenzied
with an ambition like to that of Eratostratus, and
sought to gain an undying, if undesirable, reputation,
l)y setting fire to the Tay, the Tweed, and all other
salmon rivers ?

60 THE SALMON.

It is not SO ; he is full of his subject, not of himself ;
and seems to have as keen a feeling for the honour,
dignity, and especially the independence of the grilse, as
he could have were that interesting fish a sept of the
Clan Mackenzie. But if he had had somewhat better
evidences of his doctrines, he would certainly have suc-
ceeded in setting fire to one of the theories of our natur-
alists, and to many of the acts of our legislators. To say
nothing of the interest attaching to the question as one
involving some very curious facts in natural history, it is
important to know whether our legislators have been here
all along proceeding on an erroneous assumption — taking
for granted that they were dealing with one species of
fish, when they really were operating upon* two distinct
species, having different habits, especially diflerent seasons,
and therefore, to some extent, requiring different legislative
treatment. It is certain that Mr. Mackenzie has found
room to raise doubts — chiefly, however, by the use of
positive and plausible statements, in opposition to what
has hitherto been the popular, if not unanimous behef ;
and to support these with an ingenuity which in some
cases succeeds in at least perplexing, and in refusing to
be set aside by mere off-hand denial. Still we are not
disposed to like the mode in which he has conducted his
argument, and we are disposed, having doubtless been
predisposed, to dispute his conclusions. The form in
which he proceeds is the dangerous one of dialogue. A
friend named " H." is allowed to indulge in mild sug-
gestions in favour of the old orthodoxy, and then " M.,"
as is the manner of Highland gentlemen, replies with
great heat and vigour, dirkuH/ his inoftensive antagonist

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 61

in every round. In fact, the combat is too like a " cross."
" H." appears to us rather too amiable a person to deal
on anything like equal terms with a man so terribly in
earnest as " M." is about grilse. Struck by the incom-
petence of "H./' and actuated by the impulse which
leads generous minds to sympathize with the weaker
party, we shall step for a little into " H.'s" shoes, and
see if we cannot make a better fight of it. Having put
ourselves in training by going through a course of the
evidences, we feel stimulated to the resolution of im-
ploring Dundonnell to bear with us whilst we attempt
to show, to his entire dissatisfaction, that, after all, he
and the Tweed Committee are quite wrong, and the re-
mainder of his fellow -creatures quite right.

It is strange that there should be room left for a
doubt on the subject ; or that, if there be room, the
doubt should not have been raised until these latter
days. It is true that a few " practical fishermen," here
and there, have been known to whisper the heresy which
Mr. Mackenzie first publicly preached, and which has
now been (nominally) adopted by the Tweed Commis-
sioners ; but none of these early and obscure perverters'
of the faith were known to have given intelligible
reasons for differing from their neighbours.

On the other hand, it must be admitted that, owing
mainly perhaps to the want of any formidable opposi-
tion, our naturalists have rather assumed, than proved
or tested, the common theory ; and let us say, as a fact
which will be forced upon any one who takes a run back
over the writings of naturalists on the Salmonidoe during
the last thirty years, that there has been an appalling

62 THE SALMON.

number of assumptions propounded as settled facts, and
afterwards more or less quietly withdrawn, and the cor-
rection substituted. Look, for instance, even at the
excellent James Wilson's article " Ichthyology," in the
seventh edition of the Encyclopcedia Britannica (1838),
and at the answer which, more Scottice, he gave himself
in 1840, by asking in Blackwood the question, "What's a
Parr ?" Although the fact is chiefly due to the previous
absence of question or controversy, still it is a fact, that
almost any naturalist, if asked how he knows that a
grilse is a young salmon, would not be able, on the
moment, to lead any more satisfactory evidence than
general and apparently instinctive belief. But such
answers will not suffice in questions susceptible of proof
by fact and experiment, though necessarily admissible,
and often even the best of evidence, in cases of another
class. There is a story told of a Scotch minister, on a
catechizing raid, after having got the proper answer
from a ploughman to the question, Wlio made you ?
proceeding most unfairly to the further question, " How
do you know ?" Jock grew red in the face, scratched
'his head, and then, rising, by an instinctive leap, to the
height of the argument, replied, "It's the common clash
o' the kintra," Now, this was a sound if grotesque
answer, on the main question of natural theology, in
which a general assent, founded on instinctive per-
ception, is one of the best of evidences. But in such
questions as those of natural history, or at least in this
question, where there are attainable facts sufficient to
settle it one way or the other, it will not do to adduce
the " common clash." It is only lately, however, that

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 63

tlie facts can be said to have been publicly and formally
called for ; and the case must now go to proof.

Whether a grilse (admittedly a fish of the salmon
genus, but smaller in size, and slightly different in ap-
pearance, compared with the fish everywhere acknow-
ledged as the true salmon) is an adolescent salmon on its
first ascent from the sea, or is a distinct species, compris-
ing, of course, both adolescent and adult fish — that is the
question. All scientific, with almost all popular belief,
supports the first proposition ; Mr. Mackenzie of Dun-
donnell, and a few others who have not ventured upon
paper, maintain the second. As in most ichthyological
questions, especially those relating to the migratory
tribes, there is an insufiiciency of direct evidence ; and
what there does exist of direct evidence we shall reserve
till after the leading of the circumstantial proofs. The
points to be dealt with relate to the habits of the fish,
especially as to season — to the proportion that salmon
and grilse are found to bear to each other, both in given
rivers and in given years — to the size or weight — and to
the shape or appearance. What we shall adduce under
these heads will, we hope, be found to go almost the
whole way to prove that there is some sort of connexion
between the two kinds, or rather sizes, of fish ; and a
very long way to prove that the connexion or relation is
that of youth and adult.

Foremost among those evidences we would j)lace the
fact (already alluded to in discussing the period of the
fish's first return to fresh water), that salmon ascend
rivers more or less in every month of the year, whilst
grilse do not ascend at all until a certain period, and

64 THE SALMON.

then, so to speak, come all at once ; from which two
facts, we submit, it is a fair inference that the one is an
adult fish, capable of ascending at any time, and that
the other is a young fish which first attains to the
capacity of ascending at that season at which its ascent
is practically found to begin. Or put it thus — the
difference in the time of ascent points to the inference
that salmon are the produce of several years, and grilse
of only one year. It may be possible to dispute the
inference ; but it is necessary, to a fair discussion of the
question, that these facts should be looked at, and, if
possible, fitted with some other explanation.

It is the chief defect of Mr. Mackenzie's argument,
that he not only overlooks these and similar facts, but
founds upon assumptions to the contrary. Thus, he
begins by saying, that " a grilse's instincts, in some
respects, are different, though its habits are precisely the
same ;" a proposition which, if it does not contradict
itself, is at least contradicted by what follows : — " Ex-
perience shows us that salmon, impelled by their in-
stinct, leave the sea for their home or rivers in winter
and spring, whereas the grilses do not leave the sea for
the rivers until summer ; clearly showing that the one is
a spring, and the other a summer fish." How the two
fish thus described can be spoken of as being of " pre-
cisely the same habits," is perplexing ; yet, though it
might seem at first sight that the greater the diff"erence
of habits the better for Mr. Mackenzie's theory of two
different species, it is yet a fact that, in the above pas-
sage, he under-^tsite^, as well as ^lizs-states, that differ-
ence. The difference is not that the salmon is " a spring

NATURAL HISTOIIY OF THE 8ALM0N.

65

fish," and the grilse " a summer fisli," but, roundly speak-
ing, that sahnon come at all seasons, and grilse at only
one season. The assumption that salmon cease to ascend
in summer, is utterly inadmissible, though there are
some rivers where, owing to temperature and other
natural conditions, the statement is, in a loose sense,
partially true ; and we shall bring that, and some even
more imjDortant statements, to the test of the only au-
thentic figures we know of, showing the capture of the
different kinds of migratory Salmonidce in each month
of the year. The following shows the proportions of
salmon, of grilse, and of trout (almost entirely the Salmo
eriox), to every 1000 of each kind caught, on an average
of years, in the net-fisheries of the river Tweed : —

Salmon.

Grilse.

Trout.

February (2d half of), .

22

0

8

March,

5Q

0

7

Ai^ril,

89 .

0

23

May,

128

1

56

June,

138

13

173

July,

233

371

254

August,

151

408

164

September,

113

154

129

October (1st half of), .

71

53

186

/O 0 /,

/ooo.

/oOO,

There is here, in the first place, sufficient refutation of
the statement that the " salmon is peculiarly a spring
fish," and peculiarly not " a summer fish ;" for we see
that, on tlie Tweed at least, the months showing the
smallest proportions of salmon to the whole take of
salmon, are February, March, and April ; and the months
showing the largest proportion, June, July, and August.
But the point to which we direct attention is the

E

66 THE SALMON.

contrast, or contrasts, shown as to season, l)etween grilse,
and not only salmon, but also trout. It will be under-
stood that the theory which we support assumes the
salmon column to comprise only the adults of a certain
species, the grilse column the youth of the same species,
and the trout column both the adults, and, for part of the
season, the young, of quite another species ; whilst Mr.
Mackenzie's theory assigns to the salmon and the grilse
columns respectively both the young and adults of a dis-
tinct species. Now, let us see whether the facts ascer-
tained are most reconcilable with our theory or with
Mr. Mackenzie's — with the old orthodoxy or the new
heresy. The most important contrast lies in the fact
that, whilst (doubling for the odd half month) 44 in
each 1000 of salmon, and 16 in each 1000 of trout,
are captured in February, and the take of both goes on
increasing till, in May, salmon have reached the propor-
tion of 128, and trout of 56 per 1000 ; grilse, on the
other hand, are entirely absent in the first three months
of the season, all but entirely absent in May, and show
but a small advanced -guard even in June. These facts
are at least reconcilable with, if they are not demon-
strative of, the theory that the grilse is a young fish,
performing its first ascent. Grilse do not ascend, as do
salmon and trout, in February, March, April, or even (in
the case of Tweed) May, because they are then only
descending in the condition of smolts, or are undergoing
their growth and transmutation in the sea.

Or look at the figures of the latter portion of the
season as above exhibited, and they will be found to
witness to the same efiect, though not quite so conclu-

NATUIIAL HLSTOllY OF THE SALMON. 6 7

sively, as the figures of the earlier months. In the months
of July and August, nearly eight-tenths of the whole
grilse of the year are captured ; in the month of August
alone, more than four-tenths. But Septemljer, as compared
witJi August, shows a diminution of two- thirds, or 6 6 per
cent., the capture of that month being three-twentieths of
the capture of the whole season ; October shows a dimanu-
tion of another third ; and November, were the fishing
continued, would probably show pretty nearly a blank.
Turning, however, to the salmon, we find that in those
two months, July and August, when eight-tenths of the
whole grilse ascend, only four-tenths of the whole salmon
ascend ; that in September, when the grilse have de-
(treased 66 per cent., salmon have decreased only 30 per
cent. ; and that in October, as compared with Sep-
tember, when grilse show a decrease of another third,
salmon show an increase of nearly one-third, and have
become again almost as numerous as they had been in
September. Briefly, salmon ascend in every month of
the year, in numbers, comparatively speaking, not very
unequal ; grilse, speaking roundly, do not ascend at all
in the first half of the year ; all of them, but a fraction,
ascend within two consecutive months in the middle of
the year, and in the latter months of the year their
ascent almost ceases. Mr. Mackenzie would account for
all this by saying that these are two diff*erent species of
fish ; and he finds it necessary to go the length of saying
that the one is a spring, and the other a summer fish.
It might be possil:)le, were there no facts beyond those
we are at present dealing with, to assume that there
are two species of migratory fish, (ine of them, not a

68 THE SALMON.

spring, l)ut an all-tlie-year fish, the other niamly a
summer fish. All that we maintain, on the evidence yet
adduced, is that the facts are at least equally compatible
with, and indeed entirely suitable to, the theory, that the
fish coming up all the year are the adults of various ages,
and that those rushing up in a body in summer are the
young of the same species.

To the same effect, though necessarily with less dis-
tinctness, is the rather curious evidence supplied by the
trout column in the preceding table, which, according to
the hypothesis we are maintaining, differs from the salmon
column, comprising only adults, and from the grilse
column, comprising only what we shall call, perhaps not
with strict accuracy, adolescents, in comprising both the
adults and the adolescents of another species. Because
the trout column comprises adults, it shows, like the
salmon column, a larger or smaller number ascending
every month in the year ; because it contains also
adolescents, it shows, like the grilse, a great and sudden
increase in certain summer months. Up till the end of
May, the trouts are few, but in June they suddenly increase
by 3 0 0 per cent., salmon in that month increasing only 1 2
per cent., and they increase another 50 per cent, in July,
in which month nearly a fourth of the whole capture
is obtained. We account for this feature by saying that
here we see the effects of the adolescent trouts, on their
first ascent, being added to the adults ; and, though
rather anticipating another portion of our argument, we
may add, that this view is supported by the falling ofl'
in the average weight of trouts during the months when
we sup})ose the young to l)e makino- their first ascent.

NATUltAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 69

Then, as has been clone with the salmon and grilse
columns, take the latter portion of the year : in August,
as compared with July, the trouts fall off nearly 40 per
cent., and in September decrease by other 20 per cent. ;
which shows, as in the case of the grilse, that the run of
young fish is slackening. It is true that in October the
number of trouts again increases, but that arises chiefly
from the well-known fact that in that month, and later,
comes the great rush of trouts seeking to spawn ; and,
even if this were not notorious, the fact that these late
comers are adult fisli, is indicated by the average weight
and size being much greater then than in any montli
preceding. Is there any producible explanation why the
supply of trouts, extending more or less over the whole
year, should so suddenly increase for a short time in
summer, but the hypothesis that at that time we ar(.'
getting the fish whi(ih are only on their first ascent, along
with those whicli are on their second, third, or fourth ?
And do not the facts, that we see a similar, but greater
and more sudden increase and decrease in the grilse, and
do not see such indications in the salmon column, supply,
to say the least, a very strong presumption that in tlie
trout column you have both young and old, in the
grilse column only young, and in the salmon only
old fish ?

In order to put our best foot foremost, we have not
adhered to logical sequent;e, and now adduce a fact
which properly should have come first in order : the
fact that salmon and grilse are always found together —
i.e., that where there are no salmon there are no grilse,
and where there are salmon there are grilse, and vice

70 THE SALMON.

versa ; and further, that the two fisli are found not only
together, but bearing numerically a certain rough propor-
tion to each other. In the earlier stages of the great parr
controversy, as already mentioned, a similar fact — that
where salmon were present, parr were present, and
wherever either were absent, so were the others — played
a great part, forming the chief weapon of the supporters
of the theory that the parr is the fry of the salmon, but
was not held conclusive till afterwards confirmed by Mr.
Shaw's and subsequent experiments. Neither in the
present case can the fact of grilse and salmon l>eing
always both present or both absent he held as conclu-
sively jjroving a connexion, though it supplies a very
strong presumption ; and the supplementary evidence,
though attainable, is not yet forthcoming in a complete
shape. But we are not altogether without evidence
additional to the fact of the two fish being always co-
inhabitants.

The difficulty we have here to meet is the fact that
the presence of the salmon and grilse in this or that
river might be explainable merely by the facts tliat
they are both migratory fish, and that the rivers are
accessil)le or inaccessible to botli alike. But salmon and
grilse are not the only migratory fish ; and what if we
can show that other migratory fish of the same genus
abound in some rivers, and are almost unknown in
others equally accessible, whilst the same thing is never
seen in the case of salmon and grilse ? — that is, there
are no rivers almost destitute of grilse and al)Ounding
in salmon, or the opposite. JMr. JMackenzie says, " The
Tweed bull-trout, commonly known as the ' black-tail,'

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SALAfON. 71

M very coiisj)iciious fish, may be intercepted on its way
fi'om the north, but it lias never yet been seen to the
south of the Tweed ; and if its instinct was not perfect,
the Dee, Don, and other rivers, by this time of day,
would abound with it, as the Tweed does." There are
here two serious errors in matter of fact, as well as a
correct statement which goes quite against Mr. Mac-
kenzie's argument. One of the errors we are not much
concerned to correct here : " lilack-tail" is the local name
not for the bull-trout {Sahno eriox), but for a very much
smaller fish — one of the tribe of the Sahno albus, now
generally held by naturalists to be only the young of the
Salmo trutta, or whitling. The other error, which we
have a greater interest in correcting, is the statement
that the bull-trout is " never seen to the south of the
Tweed," when, in fact, the two rivers immediately to the
south, the Aln and the Coquet, are full of that species,
to the almost entire exclusion of salmon and £rilse. Mr,
Mackenzie, however, is perfectly correct in saying, that
if the instinct of the Eriox, like that of migratory fish in
general, were not pretty nearly perfect, it would be a
common fish in the rivers to the north of Tweed, the
mouths of which it is held to pass in its marine migra-
tions. The facts as to the Sahno eriox, or l)ull-trout,
are, that in the Tweed that species is four times more
numerous than the adult salmon, and as numerous as
both salmon and grilse taken together ; that in the two
rivers to the south of Tweed, there are apparently about
fifty bull-trouts to one salmon or grilse ; but that in the
Forth, the Tay, and other large and accessible rivers to
the north, the species is filmost a stranger. In short, the

72 THE SALMON.

Itiill-trout is seen to be entirely independent of the sal-
mon and the grilse, being found in great multitude
M'here they are almost entirely absent, and vice versa.
]^ow, if the grilse were a species as distinct from the
salmon, or Salmo solar, as is the bull-trout, should not
we find similar results, some rivers abounding with
grilse, yet almost without salmon ? But what is found
is not this, but the contrary : many or few grilse imply
many or few salmon.

Mr. Mackenzie makes a sort of loose or partial denial
of this fact, by adducing the statement, that the Shin in
Sutherlandshire, a valuable salmon river, contains so few
grilses that they " are not calculated upon as part of the
commercial produce." But we have ascertained that
this statement, so inv as it is correct, is entirely explained
away l^y the fact that the Shin river is fished, not by
nets, but by a criiive, the hecks of which are of such
width as to permit most of the grilse to pass. This, of
course, accounts for the grilse forming a very small part
of the commercial value of the river ; but it does not
prove that few grilse frequent the river ; in point of fact,
they al)ound in much the usutd proportion to the salmon,
and as many as twenty have often 1)een killed by a
single rod in one day. Besides, the fact, which we do not
deny, that the proportion of grilse and salmon capturcd
varies greatly in a comparison between different rivers,
would not in the slio-htest invalidate our arsfument,
nor establish Mr. ]\Iackenzie's ; because the proportion
of captures of each kind is regulated not entirely l^y the
numbers of each frequenting the rivrr, Ijut by various
<^thor <'ivf'umstancos, l)oth artificial and natural. For

NATUEAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 7P>

instance, the net-fishing used to be voluntarily stopped
in some rivers before the run of grilse had nearly ceased,
whilst in others, the fishing was carried on for six weeks
later, or till after the conclusion of the run of grilse ; and
the difference is great between different rivers and estuaries
as to the natural facilities for capturing a fish which does
not rest and loiter like the adult salmon, but rushes on,
if Mr. Mackenzie will permit us the phrase, with the
ardour of youth, and of youth, too, on its marriage-
jaunt. But such cases do not destroy the fact that
salmon and grilse are always either both, or neither, in-
habitants of any given river ; and comparatively few of
those cases even disturb the fact that they are found
present in certain proportions to each other, and just in
such proportions as we might expect to find between the
adolescents and the adults of the same species.

Take next the test furnished by a comparison of
season with season, instead of river with river. Mr,
Mackenzie says, " It is a common remark amongst fisher-
men, that though the salmon fishery may be bad, still
the grilse fishery may be productive ; eacli fishery vary-
ing in quantity to correspond with the favourable or
unfavouraljle season in which they were spawned —
clearly showing two distinct fisheries and nature of
fish." Not at all. The "common remark among fisher-
men," the accuracy of which we have no motive to deny,
does not necessarily imply two distinct kinds of fish ;
l»ut, at least as probably, diffei'cnt broods of the same
fish, born in different years and representing different
spawning seasons. Not only, however, is Mr. Mac-
kenzie's fact as to orilsc l)t'inof sometimes abundant in

74 THE SALMON.

years when salmon are scarce, and vice versa, of no more
value to liim tlian to us ; but if he had looked a little
more closely, he would have been staggered to see how
much of method there is in tlie relations which the sup-
plies of each bear to the supplies of the other, which method
has apparently a great deal of meaning. It is a pretty
general belief among old fishermen that a good grilse
season is more than likely to be succeeded Ijy a good
salmon season in the year following, and a bad grilse
season by a bad salmon season ; and, though we are shy,
on such subjects, of the mere dicta of " practical men,"
who generally derive their data from a very narrow range
of experience, and draw their inferences with no very
enlightened regard to logical rules, yet on this point they
could scarcely go far wrong ; and we can adduce some
authentic returns, which, in a very remarkable way, cor-
roborate their belief and our explanation of the fact on
which their belief is founded. The latest period of five
years, for which we have returns of the take on Tweed,
shows an annual average capture of slightly more than
9000 adult salmon, and of shghtly less than 24,000 grilse.
In 1851, the first year of these five, the take of grilse was
only 1C,855, or about two-thirds of the annual average ;
and in the following season, 1852, the take of salmon was
only 5808, bearing just about the same proportion — viz.,
two-thirds — to the annual average of salmon, as did the
grilse of the year preceding to the annual average of
grilse. But in 1852, grilse rose to nearly 29,000, con-
siderably ahore the annual average : and in 1853, salmon
rose to 9200, also considerably above the annual average
of that period of five years. In 1853 there was a great

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 75

tcake of grilse, 43,000, or considerably more than one-lialf
above the average ; and in 1854, salmon reached 15,300,
also more than one-half above the average. In 1854
grilse declined to 16,739, one-third below the average;
and in 1855 salmon declined to 6239, also one-third
below the average. In a word, the proportion which the
grilse of any one year bore to the average number of
grilse, is found by these tables to have been just about
the proportion which the salmon of the folloiving year
bore to the average number of salmon. These facts seem
almost too neat and complete as evidence of our theory
that the grilse of one year are the salmon of subsequent
years — not, indeed, that they "prove too much," but that
they fit into our doctrine so exactly as almost to give
them the appearance of having been made to measure-
ment. But similar results are seen in a less regular and
perfect form, in the less regular and perfect returns from
other fisheries. Probably the Mackenzieites may hold
them to be only coincidences ; liut they must also admit,
that they are not only very remarkal)le, l)ut for them
exceedingly disagreeable, coincidences.

The element of weight or size, which may be held
to include that of growth, is very important ; but Mr.
Mackenzie so deals with it that there is some difficulty
in getting hold of him. He says : " One simple and
palpable fact, which any ordinary observer might have
remarked, is, that grilse in May weigh from three to five
pounds ; in July they are met with as large as from ten
to twelve pounds ; and instead of finding them in August
and September grown to the size of sixteen or twenty
pounds, which would l^e but natural if they continued

76 TPIE SALMON.

to grow to become salmon, they apparently begin to
grow backwards ; as in October we have them as small
as we had them in May, not growing one inch larger
from that time till they return to the sea in March and
April as kelts. ... If grilse grew to be salmon, and as
rapidly as is generally supposed, we should have no grilse
in October, but all salmon." We have two accusations
against this passage : the ideas are confused, and the
allegations are unproved and improbable. In the first
place, there is a confusion between the individual and
the species. Mr. Mackenzie speaks as if the grilse that
ascended in May w^ere the same individual grilse that
ascends in the later months of the year, and asks why
the individual has not grown any in three months ;
whereas there are two different persons, of much about
the same age, in so far as they were born in the same
year, the difference in their periods of ascent arising
mainly from the slight difference of several weeks in
the date of their birth or of their descent, and from
the variety of circumstances that have shortened or
prolonged their residence in the sea, the late-comers
being for the most part those wdiich have remained
longest, and consequently grown largest. In the second
place, Mr. Mackenzie has strangely assumed that it
is maintained that grilse grow into salmon whilst in
the fresh water ; whereas, wdiat is maintained is, that
besides not growing in size in the river, grilse do not
even begin to groiv into salmon until they return to the
sea ; that they ascend as grilses, descend as grilse-kelts,
and after their return to the sea become salmon, and as
such reappear in the rivers. Then, as to the facts.

NATUEAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 77

where is the evidence for saying that grilse are small in
the beginning of the season, large in the middle, and
small again at the close ? Mr. Mackenzie may be in
possession of such evidence, but he has kept it to him-
self. We also have some evidence on the point, of which,
in no expectation of gratitude, we shall give him the
benefit. On a series of years, the average weight of
the grilse captured on the Tweed fisheries was — in the
month of June, 3 11). 11| oz. ; July, 4 lb. 51 oz. ; August,
4 lb. 15 oz. ; September, 5 lb. 12| oz. ; October, 6 lb.
11 f oz. These figures are refutatory of the statement
that Q^rilse diminish in weio-ht towards the end of the
season, though we are aware that it may, and sometimes
does happen, that there are great temporary variations,
caused by the differences of seasons affecting the tem-
perature of the atmosphere and of the water ; as, for
instance, in a warm summer the grilse of July or August
will be larger than in a cold summer. But the state-
ment, even if correct, would not help Mr. Mackenzie, nor
injure us. If it were true that grilse fluctuated in size
during the season, and were even smallest in the latest
months, the fact would prove nothing in favour of the
fish l^eing a distinct species, and nothing against, but
rather something in favour of, their being adolescent
fish, born in one year, though with a difference of weeks
as to birth, and of various circumstances as to growth.
What we do see is', that (at least in the case of Tweed)
grilse go on increasing gradually in size to the end of
the fishing- season ; that increase, such as it is, being, we
maintain, caused mainly l^y many of the late-comers
having had a more protracted residence in the sea, where

78 THE SALMON.

alone the migratory Salmonida', subsequent to the infant
stages, have any perceptible growth. A different result
is seen in the case of trouts, the average weights of
which decrease during those summer months during
which the young, or first-ascenders of the species, add
themselves to the older fish ; a comparison between the
two columns in respect of weight, as we have already
seen in respect of number, showing just such differences
as would arise from one column comprising only old fish,
and the other both old and young.

But, besides showing that Mr, Mackenzie fails to
make anything in his favour out of the facts as to
weight and size, we show that, in at least two respects,
those facts are dead against him. 1st, There is a great
range between largest and smallest in salmon, and a very
small range in grilse ; 2d, There are very few — roundly
speaking almost no— salmon of those weights which may
1 )e called the grilse weights. Taking even monthly aver-
ages, which obviously can bring out very imperfectly the
facts we speak of, the average weight of Tweed salmon
in one month is 7 lb. lOf oz., and in another month
16 lb. 2f oz, ; and everybody knows that there are com-
paratively few salmon below the smaller of those monthly
averages, and a great many above the larger — a fact
corroborated by the month which shows the largest
average weight showing the greatest average number,
and by the month which shows the lowest average
weight showing also l^y far the smallest number. But
we do not see this in grilse — the diff"erence between the
smallest and the largest (excluding, of course, rare in-
dividual cases), being seldom so much as three pounds.

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 79

What we say is, that the wide range of size and weight
in the case of sahnon shows a wide range of ages and
circumstances, and that the comparatively small range
of size and weight in the grilse, we shall not say proves,
but indicates, a very much narrower range of ages and
circumstances.

But as we are here perhaps open to the reply, such
as it is, that the grilse may nevertheless be a dis-
tinct species, its narrower range of size being accounted
for by its being in its adult stage a much smaller fish,
we go on to the second point, and ask. Where are the
salmon when they are of the weight of, say, 4i or (3 lbs. ?
That salmon of such weights are often got, is true ; but
it is also true that, in proportion to the whole number,
that is the weight at which by far the fewest are got —
especially that many more are got much above than at
or about those weights. There are fewest salmon of the
weight of which there are most grilses. Now, as at some
time or another every salmon must be of those weights,
the presumption is that we ought to see many more of
them than of the higher weights, which, in the main,
signifies the greater ages— in short, if Mr. Mackenzie's
theory were correct, we ought to see more salmon of
those small sizes than of the large sizes, just as in our
own species we see more youths than elderly people.
Those youthful salmon do undoubtedly exist. Mr.
Mackenzie, if he hold to his theory, cannot tell us
where they are. We point to the grilse, and say, there
they are.

On the point of appearance, Mr. Mackenzie possesses
whatever advantage or disadvantage there is in the fact

8U THE SALMON.

that the difference between a grilse and a salmon cannot
be very easily described. But what interest has Mr.
Macikenzie in maintaining that there is no obAdous or
reliable distinction in appearance between a salmon and
a grilse ? Maintaining, as he does, that the two fish are
different species, the more visible the distinction the
better for his argument, and the worse for our argument
that they are the same fish. It is more easy to dis-
tinguish one variety from another, as a setter from a
terrier, than the young from the old of the same variety,
as a young terrier from an old one. But Mr. Mackenzie
afterwards makes a half- admission that there ai'e visible
differences.

He says, " Fishermen affirm" (and he doesn't deny)
" that a grilse has a younger appearance than a salmon."
Well, that is c|uite enough for our purpose — and far too
little for his. That is just about as much distinction as
there is between a lamb and a sheep, or between a grouse
or partridge of this season and its father or mother ;
and yet everybody who has any occasion for the know-
ledge, does know the young from the old of Ijirds and
beasts, although, in very many cases, any attempt to
describe the difference, in the absence of specimens,
would be a complete failure. Mr. Mackenzie afterwards
adds, " The only distinction I could ever ascertain is
that the tail-fin of a grilse tapers off to a finer edge than
in the salmon." Well, that may be rather a fine dis-
tinction as between two species, but is broad enough for
the distinction between an adolescent and an adult fish
of the same variety, as between the maiden and the
mother, 'ilien ]\Ir. Mackenzie, as if aware that he had

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 81

got upon slippery grouiid, tries to slide off with tlie re-
mark that " this distinction is observaljle in the smolts
also." This is quite a new statement, never heard of
before, and therefore the more imperatively requiring
that proof of which it has as yet received none. Who has
observed the distinction ? — where is it recorded ? Every
schoolboy on the banks of the Tweed (where almost
alone the salar and the eriox are found together in
plenty) knows at a glance the difference between the
smolt of the salmon and of the bull-trout— the "black-
fin" and the "orange-fin." But the knowledge of the
alleged distinction between the smolt of the salmon and.
of the grilse, if not hitherto confined to Mr. Mackenzie,
is a piece of useful knowledge certainly not yet diffused.
Mr. Mackenzie tries again : " The absurdity of the
theory consists in the assertion that the smolts of salmon,
going down to the sea iii company with the smolts of
grilse, also return from the sea under the denomination
of grilse." Where is the absurdity ? There is just as
much absurdity in supposing that the families of ewes
who have never bred before, and of ewes who have
often bred before, both appear under the denomination
of lambs.

A pretty strong point made by Mr. Mackenzie is the
allegation, supported by many appearances, but also
contradicted by some facts, that salmon and grilse are
never seen paired in connubial relations. This would be
a powerful fact if established, for we do not see the
young of any other species cohabiting only with the
young, or the old only with the old. But then, in the
case of animals in their wild or natural state, we have

F

82 THE SALMON.

a very imperfect knowledge of their proceedings, espe-
cially in the breeding season of spring, when the fur or
the plumage of old and young have in few cases much
visible difference. Further, salmon are migratory, and we
do not know the habits of migratory creatures in that
respect — for instance of swallows. Further yet, though
we must yield to Mr. Mackenzie the fact that whenever
a pair of fish of the salmon kind are seen together on a
spawning-bed, they are seen to Ije, with comparatively
rare excej)tions, pretty much of the same size ; yet in the
water the eye is not capable of distinguishing in the
case of two fish, say of seven or eight pounds, whether
both are salmon, both grilses, or one of each. Besides,
the fact cuts both ways, as indicating that, in the pro-
cess of pairing, the choice is regulated mainly by con-
siderations of size, not necessarily, nor probably, by the
consideration as to whether any fish of the desired size
is on its first ascent, or at some later stage of its career
— whether maid or widow, bachelor or widower. All
that we see really proves, not that salmon and grilse, but
that large fish and small fish, have a dislike to form
matrimonial relations with each other. Finally, in the
experimental ponds at Stormontfield, the ova of an adult
female salmon were impregnated with the milt of a male
grilse, the ova fructified, and the progeny were undis-
tinguishable from those produced by two adult parents.
This fact, indeed, we might have made both the first and
the last of our replies to the allegation that grilse and
salmon do not breed togetlier ; but as the point does not
seem to have received very much attention at those
admirable ponds, and as there is always a possibility of

NATURAL llLSTUliY UF THE SALMOX. 8?.

mistake in siicli experiments, the question perhaps eoiiM
not fairly he hehl as demonstrated.

There is, however, one experiment which might
settle, and we thought had settled the matter beyond all
doiil)t — namely, the mai-king of grilse-kelts on their
descent, and their capture on their reascent. Mr. Young
of Invershin, writes that (besides marking salmon-smolts
that have returned as grilse) he has often marked grilse,
and that they have returned as salmon ; Mr. Mackenzie
says he has done so also, if not as often, with an opposite
result, the fish returning as grilse. There have been many
experiments condu(;ted by marking on the Tweed ; l)ut
these not having been conducted with any special refer-
ence to this particular point, the results are meagre
almost to uselessness. There is there no case at all in
favour of Mr. Mackenzie's theory, but there is only one in
favour of ours. A grilse-kelt of two pounds, marked on
the 31st March 1858, was caught, on the 2d August of
the same year, as a salmon of eight pounds. Here again
there is a possibility of a mistake, and the matter really
remained to be demonstrated by experiment. That de-
monstration seems to have been supplied by the Stor-
montfield experimenters, by whom many grilses, marked
when grilse-kelts, have been recaptured on their reascent
as salmon ; but it might be well, now that the Tweed
Commissioners and Mr. Mackenzie have raised the ques-
tion, if experiments directed specially to this point were
repeated with increased care and in greater number.

There is, however, cousideral )le difiiculty in the way
of obtaining conclusive evidence from experiments made
on the fish after it has assumed its migratory habits, and

84 THE SALMON.

can no longer be kept under inspection and protection.
Of course the number of fisli marked can bear but a
small proportion to the whole number of emigrants, or
outward-bound ; the number of immigrants, or home-
ward-boun<l, bears, it is greatly to be feared, but a small
proportion to the number that went out ; and of the fish
that do return, the proportion captured by man is not
large. It has often, or indeed in the majority of cases,
chanced that among the captured immigrants there was not
one of the marked emigrants ; even in the most successful
cases, the captures have scarcely been above two or three
per cent, of the marked, which, considering the risks of
mistake, the possibility of tricks, and the more than
probability of exceptional cases, must be regarded as
supplying rather scant data.

Some of these experiments, nevertheless, even by the
great extent to which they have failed regarding their
special purposes, have served to admonish us of another
fact of which we were scarcely in search — the fact that
there is an enormous destruction of salmon life takinsf
place elsewhere than in the rivers, and otherwise than by
the inventions of man. In illustration, we give the facts
of one of the cases most fully within our knowledge.
In the spring of 1852, about 500 kelts were marked
with wire in a pool, within a few yards of tide reach, at
the bottom of the river Whitadder, which joins the
Tweed immediately above Berwick. The circumstances
were somewhat unfavourable — a long drought retarding
the departure of the fish ; but doubtless the great
majority of them got safely away. And they went

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 8 5

away for ever. None returned ; and only three of
them were ever heard of — in each case under circum-
stances of the most distressing character. One of them
was caught at the mouth of the Tyne, 70 miles to the
south ; another at Yarmouth, 300 miles to the south ;
and the third at Eyemouth, 10 miles to the north, the
last individual being found in the stomach of a cod,
with nothing remaining of him but his vertebrate column
and the silver wire. These simple but certain facts
convey a painful and pathetic idea of the remoteness
and the perils of the salmon's marine wanderings. Com-
passion and indignation mingle at the idea of a fish of
high family, gentle manners, and fastidious taste, leaving
for ever the sweet-flowing Whitadder to compete with
base-born bloaters at Yarmouth, or find an inglorious
grave in the maw of a vulgar Scottish cod —

"Ah ! little did thy miiinie think,
That day she cradled thee,
What lands thou shouldest travel round,
Or what death thou shouldst dee ! "

From such facts we draw only one " practical im-
provement,"— that the fact of such great multitudes
perishing when beyond our help in the wide and wicked
sea, is, though not exactly an eiK-ouragement, an addi-
tional reason why we should take the better care of
them during the periods when they are our wards and
guests.

It would be dishonest to omit to mention, merely
because we cannot pretend to explain, another mystery
as to the movements of the salmon, which no experi-

8(5 THE SALMON.

lueiits liave done anything to clear up. What are those
clean sahnon that run up the rivers in kite winter or early
spring"? — where have they been in the preceding months?
— what are they wanting now ? They cannot be wanting
to spawn, for there is no spawning for at least six months
to come. They cannot have spawned early in the pre-
ceding or rather present spawning season, — gone down,
recovered, and returned ; for numerous experiments
show that the shortest period of return is aljout three
months, and it is oidy aliout three months since the
earliest fish had begun to spawn in the river wliich
these are now ascending. They must have passed the
autumn or earlier winter in the sea. Then they must
have passed the winter A\'ithout breeding, and there we
have the discouraging fact or hypothesis that the salmon
is a fish which does not ])reed every year, — a hypothesis
which will have the less chance of acceptance just at
present, when it appears, or is supposed to have been
discovered, that the herrino- — a fish reseml^lino^ the
salmon at least in the important respect of being mi-
gratory— breeds twice in each year, or, at all events,
breeds at two widely different seasons of the year.

It will be understood that all or almost all that has
been said here has reference only to the Salmo salar,
or true salmon. Beyond that, in the questions about
" fish of the salmon kind" — Salmo eriox, Salmo trutta,
Salmo alhus, etc. etc.— lies a vast field, almost pathless,
and thickly covered with an underwood of doulit and
confusion. There are, perhaps, half a dozen species or
varieties, all of more or less different ha1)its, and almost

NATUllAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 87

(ill having ditiereiit lumies in different loi^alities, besides
whicli, the same name is often applied to different species ;
and the young and the adult of one species are some-
times classed as two species, sometimes vice versa. The
facts, in short, arc in darkness and confusion, and their
confusion is twice confounded by an unsettled nomen-
clature. This part of the subject (cannot be regarded as
quite unimportant ; for instance, the take of the Salmo
eriox on the Tweed is in some years greater than that
of salmon and grilse together. There is, however, this
consolation, that the want of knowledo'e regarding; the
various kinds of "sea- trout" is to be regretted chiefly
as a deficiency in natural history — in matters of legis-
lation, preservation, and increase, whatever is good for
the salmon proper will l)e found, generally speaking,
aljout equally good for his poor relations and social
inferiors.

88 THE SALMON.

CHAPTER III.

DECAY OF SALMON.
Amount of the Decay — Periods — Causes.

Great as has been the decay in the supply of Salmon
in the United Kingdom, there has been a tendency to
rate that decay rather above than below its true amount.
That the numbers of a fish of such quality, haunts, and
habits must tend to diminish, or can be maintained only
l3y increased care and legislative aid, in countries where
population and mdustries are great and growing, is sufii-
ciently obvious. The obstacles to the fish performing
its natural journeys and functions, the number and efti-
ciency of the instruments of capture, the demand for the
product as food, all increase, and all tend to increase
the pressure upon the supply beyond the powers of re-
production. Still there have been some serious mistakes
in estimating, or rather assuming, the amount as well as
the periods of the decline. It has been a good deal forgot-
ten that the excessive plenty of olden times, besides being-
somewhat more matter of tradition than of evidence,
was rather a partial or local than a general or national
plenty ; and also that in later times the great im-
poverishment of many of the principal fisheries repre-
sented rather a temporary enrichment of other and

DECAY OF SALMON. 89

newer fislieries than a, general decay. That sahnon have
greatly diminished, are even still diminishing, and ought
to be increased, are all truths. What is here sought to
be guarded against is merely the deduction that that
diminution is to l)e measured either l)y the decrease in
the yield of some of what used to be the most productive
fisheries, or by the facts that formerly salmon were in
some places a cheap and abundant commodity, and now
are everywhere a costly luxury.

The ease and rapidity with which scarcity can be in-
flicted on a natural product such as salmon are visible
even in the history of regions where the fish is or was
incomparably more abundant, and the means and induce-
ments to capture incomparably smaller, than at almost
any time or in any district in the United Kingdom.
Some of the American rivers, whose salmon supplied food
only to a few hundreds of wandering Indians, are re-
ported by recent travellers to have been depopulated, and
the supply to have been brought far below the demand,
merely by the disregard of seasons, though very slight
care and a little well-timed abstinence would have con-
tinued and increased a natural supply capable of meet-
ing ten times the demand. There are few regions in the
world that had more salmon, and that even yet have
fewer men, than Labrador and the northern shores of the
lower St. Lawrence ; yet even there it is complained,
in most of the recent works regardino; British North
America, and also in various documents issued by the
Canadian Government, that abundance has by neglect
and abuse been turned to scarcity. " Thirty years
ago," said the Rev. AV. Agar Adamson, in a paper read

90 THE SALMON.

before the Canadian Institute, " every stream tributary
to the St. Lawrence, from Niagara to Labrador on the
north side, and to Gaspe Basin on the south side,
abounded with sahnon. At the present moment, with
the exception of a few, there is not one to be found in
any river between the Falls of Niagara and the city of
Quebec. This deplorable decrease in a natural produc-
tion of great value has arisen from two causes : Jirst, the
natural disposition of uncivilized men to destroy at all
times and at all seasons whatever has life and is fit for
food ; and, second, the reluctance of those persons who
had constructed mill-dams to attach to them slides."
Unfortunately, it is not only " uncivilized men" that
possess the propensity which has desolated so many of
the rivers of North America — to say nothing of noble-
men, country gentlemen, and corporations, operative
fishermen, almost everywhere in the United Kingdom,
and especially on the " common fisheries" of England
and L'eland, are more or less fully possessed with the
notion that restrictions as to periods and modes of
killing are invasions and injustice, and that the more
fish that are killed, the more will remain to be killed.
When we see the results even on the St. Lawrence and
its tributaries, running through comparative deserts, we
need not wonder at the evil results of much greater
means of destruction employed on a much m<.)re ex
haustible field.

Of the fact that from the earliest historical periods
down to less than a century ago, salmon abounded to
excess in the neio;hbourhood of Enolish and Irish, and
still more of St^ottish rivers, accessible to migratory

DECAY OF SALMON. 91

fish, there is no doubt whatever ; though we would
remark, in passing, that this fact must be taken in con-
nexion with the other fact, that from the earliest periods
both the English and Scottish lesjislatures exercised a
rigorous, and on the whole a w^ise care over the fisheries.
There were no statistics in the old days, so that if there
is any need for proof where there is neither doubt nor
denial, w^e must l)e content to take it in chance frag-
ments. There is evidence of a considerable export of
Scotch salmon (pickled), chiefly to Flanders and France,
so early as 1380 ; and a municipal order atRheims, of
that date, contains regulations for its sale. In the time
of Richelieu, an obscure Scotchman, of the name of Mon-
teith, from the neighbourhood of Stirling, having pre-
sented himself at the French Court, and being asked of
w^hat family he was, audaciously answered, " Monteith
de Salmonnet ;" and so natural seemed such a designa-
tion from a Scotchman that the answer was unsuspect-
ingly accepted, the adventurer was received by the name
he had given, and under that name wrote a book in
French, which is still extant. Among the oldest state-
ments of what was to be learned of the extent of the
salmon fisheries by travelling in Scotland, are those given
about two hundred years ago ill the curious book of the
Cromwellian trooper, Captain Francks, already mentioned.
Francks (from whose descriptions, by the bye, it is clear
that the art of salmon- angling w^as practised then almost
precisely as it is now) takes occasion at most of his halt-
ing-places to make a short descant on the al)unt'ance of
the salmon in Scotland. Thus, of Stirling, he writes : —
" The Forth relieves the countrx' with lier great plenty

92 THE SALMON.

of salmon, wliere tlie burgomasters, as in many other
parts of Scotland, are compelled to reinforce an ancient
Statute, that commands all masters and others not to
force or compel any servant, or an apprentice, to feed
upon salmon more than thrice a week, . . , The abund-
ance of salmon hereabouts in these parts is hardly to be
credited. And the reader, I fancy, will be of my per-
swasion, when he comes to consider that the price of a
salmon formerly exceeded not the value of sixpence
sterling." And a hundred years later, the English
Engineer Officer, Captain Burt, writing from Inverness,
says, that the price of salmon there was a penny a pound,
and that " the meanest servants who are not at board
wages will not make a meal upon salmon if they can
get anything else to eat." In partial corroboration of
these statements about the Ness, it may be mentioned
that there is a person still living who held a lease of
a fishing in that river, under which he was bound to
supply the inhabitants of Inverness, during a considerable
portion of the year, with salmon at 2d. a pound.

Indeed, till the present century almost every traveller
that entered Scotland made the " great plenty of salmon "
a subject of remark. Thus Defoe, as soon as he enters
the kingdom at Kirkcudbright, writes down : " There is
a line salmon-fishing in this river ;" and when he reaches
Aberdeen, he says : " The rivers Dee and Don afford
salmon in the greatest plenty that can be imagined, to
that degree that in some of the summer months the ser-
vants won't eat them but twice a week, they are so fat
and fulsome ; it's almost incredible how they spread ; in
autumn they engender, and in shallow ])Ools of tlie river

DFX'AY OF SALMON. 93

they cast their spawn, and cover it with sand, and then
they are so _poor and lean that they are only skin and
bone ; of that spawn, in the spring, conies a fry of tender
little fishes, who make directly to the sea, and, growing
to their full progress, return to the river where they
were spawned." Defoe wrote this about the same time
as Burt wrote ; and another traveller, of nearly the same
period, describing himself as " A Gentleman," begins his
book : — " The salmon-fishery is particularly the delight
and the boast of the Scotch, insomuch that for it they
too much neglect all the rest." Speaking of Perth, the
same writer says : — "The salmon taken here, and all
over the Tay, are extremely good, and the quantity pro-
digious. They convey them to Edinburgh, and to all
the towns where they have no salmon, and barrel-up
great quantities for exportation." Of A1:)erdeen : — " The
quantity of salmon and perches (?) taken in both rivers
is a kind of prodigy ; the profits are very considerable,
the salmon being sent abroad into difierent parts of the
world, particularly into England, France, the Baltic, and
several other places." Of the Ness, he says : — " Here is
a great salmon-fishery," and he was more interested than
gratified by the sight of the " cruives," then used by the
Corporation of the town. These statements — and they
might easily be multiplied — are of course good evidences
of local plenty, and also of a very considerable export of
the fish in a salted state, though it must not be forgotten
that at the period when travellers assigned such great
commercial importance to our salmon-fisheries they must
be held as speaking in some degree by comparison with
other industries, Avhich were then insiofnificant.

94 THE SALMON.

As soon as we get into the present (-entniy, we read
no more of the great abinidance and cheapness of sahnon.
The Rev. James Hall, of London, who wrote, about 1805,
Travels in Scotland hy an Unusual Route, says of
Queensferry on the Forth : — " There is a sahnon-fishery
near here, which is often extremely productive ; but this
species of food is generally too dear to be used by the
common people. Our forefathers, who cared little for
salmon, and thought it so unwholesome that there was
generally a clause inserted in indentures in Scotland,
that apprentices should not have salmon set Ijefore them
above three times a week, were not active in catching
them. But matters are the reverse now. Fisheries on
the rivers, as well as the sea-coasts of Scotland, are more
and more becoming an object of concern ; and nets,
boats, and casks, and fishers are almost everywhere to
be seen." The same writer tells a story about two
proprietors on the Ythan in Al^erdeenshire having been,
about fifty years before, joint-proprietors of a right of
ferry and a right of fishing, producing about £12 a year
each, and one of them successfully proposing to give up
his share of the ferry on getting the whole of the fishery
— a bargain which, when Hall wrote, had resulted in the
owner of the fishery getting £500 or £600 a year, while
the owner of the ferry was still getting only the old £12.
Hall also mentions that the Duke of Gordon's (now
Duke of Richmond's) fisheries on the Spey, which had
shortly before been let at £1500, were then let on lease
at £5000 a year.

The old and familiar story told by Francks, and
almost all o\\\o\' travellers, and even in our own days told

DECAY OF SALMON. 95

somewhere or other idmost every week, about apprentices
and farm-servants stipulating in their indentures and
otherwise not to have to eat salmon above twice a week,
must, w^e suppose, be true, since everybody has ahvays
been telling it ; but it should be mentioned that no in-
dentures or other written evidence to that effect have
ever been seen, and that even the oldest among the
writers who give the story, give it as a tale of other
days, rather than of their own. The Koyal Commis-
sioners of Inquiry into the Salmon Fisheries of England
and Wales (1860), met the story almost everywhere,
but its evidence nowhere. " We endeavoured," they
say in their Report, " to obtain a sight of one of these
instruments, but without success, though we met with
persons who stated they had seen them ; and the
universal prevalence of the tradition seems to justify
belief in it." Be that as it may, however, there is a
fallacy in measuring the difference between former
abundance and present scarcity by statements like this,
or comparisons between old and present prices. Some
people seem to forget that even since the least old of the
old times with which comparison has generally been
made, the number of mouths has at least trebled, and
that consequently, even if this represented, as it does not,
the "whole increase of consumers, there would necessarily
be a comparative scarcity, unless the fish had trebled
too. But the mouths have not only trebled, they are
incomparably more easily reached. In the old times,
though there was a glut at Berwick and Perth, there
might be a dearth at London, and probably an entire
destitution in Nottingham and Derby. There is a story

96 THE SALMON.

(it was told by Burt 130 years ago, and is older even
than his time, though applicable also to times long sub-
sequent) of a Highland laird of the last century going
to a London hotel with his gilly, and, from motives of
frugality, ordering a beef-steak for himself, and " salmon
for the laddie." On reckoning with his host, he dis-
covered he had to pay a shilling for his own dinner,
and a guinea for " the laddie's." The state of matters
roughly illustrated by this anecdote, arose chiefly from
the manner in which the slowness of conveyance affected
a very perishable commodity ; but also from the ex-
pedient (packing in ice) necessary for keeping the fish
in condition even for a few hours, having been a com-
paratively recent discovery. There was, indeed, as we
have seen, a considerable export of pickled salmon
from Scotland to several foreign countries. Francks
says of the Brora, in Sutherland, " They barrel-up for
France and other parts annually as much salmon as
amounts to £300 sterling a year." This trade, how-
ever, seems almost to have ceased, probably from
the fish becoming dearer and scarcer, even before the
system of packing the fresh fish in ice opened up a new
kind of market. It is necessary, too, in making such
comparisons between old and recent periods, to take into
consideration two other facts telling in opposite directions.
Even after the resort to ice-packing, the slowness and
clearness of carrias^e lono; continued almost to shut out
from the chief markets the more distant or inaccessible
of the fisheries, and so to keep up a local cheapness, and
delay the equalization of prices. Thus tliirty, or even
twenty-five years ago, the number of boxes of one cwt.

DECAY OF SALMON. 97

each sent to London from the Irish fislieries was only
300 or 400 ; ten years ago, it had risen to 3000, and is
now above 8000 ; in other words, has increased twenty-
fold. On the other hand, it should be noted that recent
prices, as ordinarily quoted, do not fully represent the
rise of price that has taken place ; for the falling off in
the sujDply has been in the earlier months of the season,
when fish are in best condition and at highest value,
while there has been rather an increase in the latter
months of the season, when the condition of the fish is
deteriorated, and the greater number of them consist,
not of adult salmon, but of grilse, which bring little
more than half the price per pound.

Coming down to later dates, we encounter a new
difficulty, rendering the statistics regarding the salmon-
fisheries of the rivers not available as data for pr(wing
the decline in the total supply — the introduction of
fixed engines on the sea-coast, begun about forty years
ago, having transferred, without at the first diminishing,
the supply. Looking mainly to the Scotch rivers, the
fact that, for a considerable number of years after the
introduction of fixed engines on the sea-coast, there
was no considerable decline of supply on the whole,
seems sufficiently established by the fact, that, with a
demand certainly not decreasing, prices (subject to
the explanation just given) did not materially alter,
though many of the older or river fisheries suffered
almost immediately a severe impoverishment. Beyond
all this lie other difficulties — it is impossible to obtain
the statistics of the whole fisheries at former periods, the
statistics even of the present period are very imperfect.

98 THE SALMON.

and there is great danger of being deluded as to the
changes in the amount of produce, by taking figures
for localities too small and periods too short to insure
any approach to accuracy in the deducing of a total. It
is worse than useless to draw inferences from the yield
of single fisheries, or even an entire river in a single
season, because it often happens that, from the accidents
of flood and atmosphere, a good fishery fails in the same
year, and sometimes even in the same river, in which
even the bad fisheries are doing well, and that sometimes
from the same causes the prime of the season will be
half-lost to an entire river or district, not from the
absence of fish, but from the presence of natural or
accidental obstructions to catching them, such as a de-
ficiency of water. The nearest approach to an authentic
statement of the amount of the general decline during a
more or less well-defined period, is that given in 1860
by the English Commissioners of Inquiry, who state that
the evidence as to those rivers of England and Wales
where the fish had not been quite extinguished, showed
a decline, ranging from nine-tenths to xVxrths, within the
memory of living witnesses. This sort of e\dclence, how-
ever, it will be seen, is not much more to be relied on
for accuracy than the deductions to be drawn from facts
better specified, but too petty, and possibly exceptional.
The best plan seems to be to avoid on the one hand
data too narrow, and on the other any attempt to grasp
a larger mass of facts than can be accurately obtained
or easily handled, by taking one or two large rivers or
districts, having nothing exceptional in their circum-
stances, and a period of time sufiiciently long to prevent

DECAY OF SALMON. 99

any confusion of the accidental or temporary with the
natural or enduring. In pursuance of this plan, we shall
confine ourselves chiefly to Scotland, for several reasons,
as, for instance, that it is the chief field of salmon-fishery,
both for market and sport ; that the statistics of the
scattered and long-neglected fisheries of England are, as
we have seen, inaccessible ; and that those of Ireland,
besides being very imperfect, are to be obtained, such as
they are, from the Reports of the Irish Fishery Com-
missioners ; while we have found those of Scotland,
though not obtainable as a whole, so complete and
authentic as to one or two of the principal rivers, that
they supply sufficient data for the chief purposes here
contemplated. Still more to narrow the ground, we may
state generally that, with the single and partial exception
of the Tay, to be separately dealt with, the decline in the
Scottish fisheries was, till the legislation of the last three
or four years, universal and alarming, extending over
almost every river and district, from the south western
Doon to the north-eastern Dee ; although in one or two
cases, such as the Spey and the rivers of Sutherland,
where the fisheries are in the hands of one great pro-
prietor, who had resorted to a wise moderation, a great
difference for the better was discernible.

Taking first and chiefly the Tweed, one of the
principal proprietors of its net-fisheries stated to the
House of Commons in 1824, that the rental of the river
was then £10,000, had for seven years preceding aver-
aged £12,000, and in 1814 had been £20,000 ; in six
or seven years from the time that evidence was given,
the decline of which the witness told brought the rent

100 THE SALMON.

to less than a half of what it was when he spoke, and to
less than a third of what he had seen it. For the next
following twenty-five years, which brings us up to near the
beginning of the recent legislation, we are able to give the
Tweed rental with precision for each period of five years :

Rental.

5 years, 1831 to 1835 inclusive, the average was ,£4241 11 1

5 „ 183G to 1840 „ „ 3840 G 9

5 „ 1841 to 1845 „ „ 4878 6 0

5 „ 1846 to 1850 „ „ 5022 17 1

5 „ 1851 to 1855 „ „ 4588 3 2

And in 1856, the year before Parliament was asked to
legislate on what may be called the improved principles
now generally adopted, the rent of the Tweed was
£4046, 18s. lOd. It would appear, at first sight, that
though the decrease from an earlier period had been
enormous, there had been no decrease, but rather an in-
crease, during the twenty-five years included in the
figures last given. Rent alone, however, is, for obvious
reasons, an imperfect or misleading mode of measuring
the decay of fisheries, because, as quantity diminishes,
the tendency of prices is to rise. Leaving the rent,
and coming to deal with the produce, we shall see
that that had not only decayed much more than the
rental, but that it had been sinking even during those
periods when the rental had been rising. In 1804, the
number of boxes sent from Berwick was 13,000 ; in
1816, 11,000; 1818-20, average of 8000. It never
afterwards reached 5000, and had at the latest returns,
immediately before the recent legislation, sunk to al^out
3000. But the truth will be more fully brought out by
the followino- figures, which show at a glance not only

DECAY OF SALMON.

101

the decline in produce during forty-five years, but also,
by comparison with the tabulated figures preceding, the
degree in wliich the produce may decline even while the
rent rises ; in other words, how much more and sooner
the loss falls on the public than on the proprietors. The
figures are the condensed essence of a great mass of re-
turns, showing the average annual produce of the Tweed,
during each period of five years from 1811 down to 1855
(a year after which, alarm being taken, statistics ceased
to be attainable), and require no further preface, even to
those least acquainted with salmon nomenclature, than
this, that " salmon" means the adult of the Salmo salary
whether two or twenty years old, which has ascended
and propagated at least once before; that "grilse" is
the same fish in a maiden condition, on its first ascent ;
and that " trout" is the Salmo eriox of naturalists, a
comparatively coarse and low-priced fish, nowhere found
in such proportionate abundance as in the Tweed : —

Salmon.

Grilse.

Trout.

1811 to 1815,

40,297

08,057

31,235

1816 to 1820,

37,938

87,089

48,078

1821 to 1825,

22,930

57,647

62,475

1826 to 1830,

9,804

53,990

48,864

1831 to 1835,

14,416

05,112

69,121

1836 to 1840,

14,149

52,283

54,877

1841 to 1845,

18,846

81,047

69,712

1846 to 1850,

11,479

56,190

49,630

1851 to 1855,

9,085

23,905

32,764

In supplement, we may give separately the actual
j)roduce of the season 1855, which is included, of course,
in the last of the above quinquennial periods : —

Salmon.

6,329

Grilse.

13,952

Trout.

23,736

102 ' THE SALMON.

And also the take for 1856, which is not included in
the table : —

Salmon. Grilse. Trout.

4,885 33,992 30,597

For the full understanding and appreciation of the
evidence which this Table affords of rapid decay, if not of
then approaching extermination, one or two explanations
will be useful. Let the reader begin by running his eye
down the first or Salmon column. He will see that,
reckoning by thousands, it commences with 40 and ends
with 9, or, taking the most recent piece of evidence,
ends with 6 ; in other words, the take of salmon in the
Tweed had declined more than five-sixths. Nor does
mere decrease of number adequately represent the decay,
f(jr the Tweed adult salmon (we speak to a fraction, and
by book, although we do not think it necessary to print
the book) is, on the average, as compared with a grilse,
treble in weight or quantity, and quadruple in value —
and, as compared with a trout, quintuple in weight and
octuple in value. Further, it must be borne in mind
that the adult salmon are the produce of an indefinite
number of preceding seasons, representing, in short, all
of the salmon kind that have not been killed on their
first ascent, or have ever been allowed to breed.
Naturally, therefore, this column should exhibit much
larger numbers than the column for Grilse, which are all
the produce of one year ; and quite as naturally, when
the number was seen to be not only exceedingly small in
itself and in proportion to the number of grilse, but to
have diminished five-sixths within fifty years, and more
than a half within twenty, and to be still on a hasten-

DECAY OF SALMON. 103

iiig downward movement, a suspicion if not a convic-
tion arose, that such a state of things neither could nor
ought to be of long continuance.

The Grilse column presents somewhat different fea-
tures, having in its earlier stages a hue of prosperity,
which, however, proves to have been but the symptom of
an undermined constitution. It will be seen that, from
the beginning of the period down to about 1845, w^hile
the produce in adult salmon was undergoing that rapid
decay which continued at least till the new legislation,
the produce in grilse was fully maintained, the period
1841-45 being nearly as high as any quinquennial period
preceding — indeed the year 1842 was the highest grilse
year ever known. But what was the meaning of this
prosperity, taken in connexion with a decrease in the
number of the adults ? In the period 1841-45, the
annual averag-e take of adult salmon was less than
19,000, while the average of grilse was more than
81,000, and the disproportion is still greater in some
of the preceding years. The fact thus appears, that the
apparent prosperity in grilse, which prevailed till within
the last ten years of the period, had this ominous mean-
ing, that of the wdiole number of the salmon species killed
after having visited the sea {i.e., excluding the innumerable
multitudes killed in the infantile or parr and smolt states)
nearly four-fifths were, and probably still are, killed
before marriage. This process, naturally a veiy short
and sharp one, reached its point of culmination aljout
1845. The annual average of the produce of grilse in
the quinquennial period ending with that year, was, as
we have seen, 81,000, having mcreased between a third

104 THE SALMON.

and a half during tlie same period in which the adult
salmon had decilined a half or two-thirds, so that, to a
great extent, a compensation had been found for the
decay of the more valuable fish. But in the next five
years the Grilse produce fell a third, to 50,000 ; in the
next and last five years it fell two-thirds, to 23,000 ;
and in the season of 1855 it had reached 13,000, or less
than a sixth of the average of ten years before. In
1856, it will be observed, the number again rose to
about a half of what it had been eight or ten years
IjL'fore ; but that symptom of improvement, small and
exceptional at the best, is more than counterbalanced by
the continued falling off" in adult salmon, showing that of
the total number of the species killed in the Tweed in
that year (the last year of which the statistics have been
obtained), nearly six-sevenths were fish that had never
l)red.

It is curious to find the late Mr. James AVilson, in speak-
ing on these most significant facts, say {Encyclopcedia Bri-
tanuica,ix. 608), "There are now as many fish bred as
ever; but that they are killed at an earlier age is evident
from the great extent to which the slaughter of grilse
now exceeds that of salmon." We should say that when
the proportion slaughtered of fish that had never bred
at aU had been greatly increased, and when the number
of fish that had bred had diminished by three-fourths,
— when the proportional mortality had enormously in-
creased among single people, and when there was only
one married person where there used to be five, — it was
exceedingly difticult to understand how there could be
as many fish bred as ever, or how we were to avoid the

DECAY OF SALMON. 105

conclusion tliat a great decay had taken place in the
work of populating the waters. On the Grilse figures as
they stand, we here only make one further remark, that
the decrease during the last ten years of the period was
not merely evidence of the rapid exhaustion of the crop,
but a pretty clear indication of the average duration of
salmon life having been greatly reduced by an increase
in the efficiency or severity of the fishing.

The Trout column, though affected by different
causes, bears on the surface a considerable resem-
blance to that of Grilse, inasmuch as it shows an
increase up to about 1845, and a rapid decline through-
out the ten years following. It is curious to observe,
that while, at the period with which the Table com-
mences, the number of Salmon exceeded that of Trouts
hy a fourth, we find, on coming to the period of
1841-45, that by the twofold operation of the Salmon
having diminished l)y more than a half, and the Trout
having more than doubled, the position of the two
sorts was more than reversed, the trouts outnumber-
ing the salmon as four to one. This increase in trouts
has, with much appearance of reason, been ascribed in
great part to the fact that standing-nets upon the sea-
shore take a comparatively small pi^oportion of trouts,
owing to the marine habits of that fish differing some-
what from that of the salmon and grilse, a point with
which we shall deal more particularly when we come to
speak of fixed engines. This fact may in great part
account for the capture of trouts having increased
during a large portion of the period in which the salmon,
peculiarly the victims of the sea-shore fixed nets, were

106

THE SALMON.

decreasing. But how are we to account for the fact,
that during the last ten years of the period the trouts
decreased more than a half on the average, and according
to the latest year, two-thirds ? We see no explanation
but in the inference that not only the fixed nets, which
took chiefly salmon, but also those within the river,
which took more trout than salmon, were fished with
an improvident mercilessness.

Estimated by weight, it may be mentioned that,
compared with the earlier period, the falling off" in the
annual produce' of the Tweed fisheries, just previous
to the recent legislation, amounted to something like
200,000 pounds, as entirely and as needlessly lost as if
it had been thrown into the sea or upon the dunghill.

To see at a glance the difference of symptoms in a
diseased river and in a healthy river, in a river greedily
fished and a river providently fished, compare the Table
regarding the Tweed, with the following, showing the
produce of the Duke of Richmond's fisheries on the
Spey, in the years named :—

Salmon.

Grilse.

Tnmts.

1851,

6,515

33,285

8,660

1852,

10,980

46,041

8,549

1853,

15,773

58,166

16,675

1854,

29,780

36,148

16,025

1855,

13,194

48,740

9,660

1856,

14,103

27,528

8,118

1857,

13,466

54,949

31,473

1858,

30,840

35,409

15,313

1859,

23,608

17,263

5,853

It would not be of much practical value to enter on
comparisons between the Tweed tables and the Spey

DECAY OF SALMON. 107

tables as to the columns for " Trouts " {Salmo eriox),
because the vast difference in that respect between
the two rivers is a difference established by nature.
But there is great significance in the other columns.
While in the Tweed the proportion netted of the grilse
or adolescent salmon to the adult salmon is four or five
to one, on the Spey it is little more than double. The
explanation of which is, that, in the years named, the
Spey, besides having been relieved from fixed nets, was
fished only to the middle of August ; while the Tweed,
besides having fixed nets at its mouth, was fished to the
middle of October. In passing, let us add, though the
fact scarcely Ijelongs to the question more immediately
in hand, that the Tweed fisheries, as compared with the
Duke of Richmond's, while taking nearly double the fish
of all kinds, yield less than half the rent or profit.

An apparent, and to some extent real exception to
the rule of general decline, previous to the recent legis-
lation, was exhibited by the river andjirtli of Tay taken
together. The difference between the Tay and other
fishing districts in Scotland, consisted chiefly in this,
that nine or ten years ago the 7'ental of the Tay was
not greatly less than it had been twenty or thirty years
before, though within that period it had once or twice
suffered great decline. But besides that rental is an
imperfect test, there were several special favouring or
saving circumstances in the case of the Tay, of which
it might perhaps be sufficient to mention merely one, —
the Tay proprietors for a considerable period anticipated
by voluntary agreement the improved legislation to
which they ultimately became subject. Again, during

108 THE SALMON.

the period at the end of which the rental of the Tay
had not materially decreased, the price of the fish had
very greatly advanced, from which the inference is, that
the produce must have fallen off" in proportion as the
price rose. On this point, however, we cannot get beyond
an inference, the returns of the produce of Tay extend-
ing only to 1844, till which period they were made under
compulsion of a local act, and since which they have been
kept secret by the lessees, who are numerous, divided,
and jealous. From such facts as we have, we learn,
1st, that the proportion of captured grilse to salmon had
been greatly and gradually increasing, though it had not
attained to anything like the results in the case of the
Tweed ; and, 2d, that though the Tay fisheries as a
whole did not materially decrease in money value, the
upper net-fisheries, situated immediately above the tide,
fell off so rapidly that their rental, which was formerly
£3000, sank to £650. The signification of these two
facts, and especially of the last, is simply this, that the
fishing in the lower or tidal parts of the river had so
increased in effectiveness that a Tay salmon's life had
been reduced by many months, and his road to destruc-
tion shortened by many miles. But how are we to ac-
count for these results being so much less in degree in
the Tay than elsewhere, and especially in the Tay's sister
and rival, the Tweed ? By way of explanation, we
would suggest, first, that the numl^er of fish killed in the
Tay, though perhaps as great positively as that killed in
Tweed, is smaller in jorojwrtion to the nurnher existing ;
and second, that the Ijreeding-fish and the young on the
Tay have l)cen very much better protected. On the first

DECAY OF SALMON. 109

point we speak with doubt and reservation, as being one
wliicli purely "practical men" will claim as exclusively
their own. But any man may see that, for thirty miles
upwards from the sea, the Tay is a mixture of firth and
river, running over a broad and varying channel, where
the route of the fish, we might surmise, can neither be
certainly known nor entirely commanded, and that, im-
mediately above the tide, the river gets so rapid and
rough-bottomed as, except at a few spots, to be unavail-
able for net-fishing. And on the other hand, we see
that, within a very few yards upwards from the ocean,
the Tweed is a comparatively narrow and shallow river
(it is fordable at little more than a stone-cast from the
shipping at Berwick quay), with a well-defined and
smooth -bottomed channel, so that the fish comes at once
within reach and even sight of his human or inhuman
enemy.

The second point can be spoken to more posi-
tively. There can be no doul)t that the habits of the
Tay salmon, whether natural or constrained, and the
character of the human population among whom they
sojourn, preserve them to a very great extent from those
perils which prove so fatal to their brethren and sisters
of the Tweed. The Tay fish, for the most part, confine
their travels and their breeding operations to the com-
paratively short stream of the main river, between Perth
and Loch Tay (about forty miles), where they are well
protected by nature and by man ; while the Tweed
salmon extend their movements over the whole hundred
miles of the main river, and over at least as many miles
of the tributaries and sub-tributaries, where nature leaves

110 THE SALMON.

them and their eggs exposed to innumeraljle dangers,
and where no man is able, and very few men are
wilhng, to extend protection, or even refrain from de-
struction. It is reasonable to suppose that the more
aspiring and daring habits of the Tweed salmon are at
least in great part natural and voluntary, for there are
very remarkable differences between the habits of the
salmon of different rivers as to the length of their time
and their journey in fresh water, before they assume, so
to speak, the manners and customs of their new element.
Thus the salmon of the Ness, and scarcely less of the
Spey, the Tay, and other rivers, are many of them con-
tent to choose their fresh-water haunts immediately above
the tide, and to begin the very day of their arrival to do
as fish in rivers ought to do, including the taking of the
angler's lure ; but a Tweed salmon, though at low tide
he is in fresh water as soon as he doubles the pier of
Berwick, and can run out of all tidal influences in half
an hour, will not, except under circumstances of dire
necessity, take a day's or an hour's lodging, still less any
refreshment in the shape of a bunch of feathers and
barbed steel, until he is at least twelve, and scarcely
indeed till he is twenty miles on his upward journey.
It considerably helps out this explanation to add, that
the natural course of the two rivers tends to the same
result : owing to the steepness of the land, few of the
tributaries of the Tay are available for salmon, and
almost the only, though quite a sufficient spawning-
ground is the main river, which issues almost full-grown
from the parent lake ; while the Tweed, in its course
through five counties, and (with the single exception of

DECAY OF SALMON. Ill

the Gain, choked at the mouth by a woollen mill) all its
tributaries and their innumerable " burns," are accessible
to every fish of ordinary enterprise and energy.

This would be no harm, but for another difference
— the fish in Tay are befriended by the inhabitants ;
the fish in Tweed have always been regarded as fair,
though unlawful spoil. Although the Tay fishery pro-
prietors pay only six per cent, of their rental for
protection, the killing of fish in close -time is almost
unknown ; although the Tweed proprietors have long
paid at least 20 per cent, of their rental, hundreds
of men used to employ themselves in slaughtering
the breeders every suitable night from November to
March. The explanation of this is, that the owners
and other residents near the spawning-grounds of the
Tay were and are both able and willing to protect the
fish, and that those in the Tweed were neither. It
is comparatively easy for Taysian potentates like the
Duke of Atholl and the Earl of Breadalbane — who are
monarchs of much more than all they survey, and lords
of the fish not less than of "the fowl and the brute" —
to deter from water-poaching a population mainly their
own dependants ; but even the Duke of Buccleuch has
but small influence with the weavers of Hawick, Selkirk,
and Galashiels, who retain very much of the spirit and
propensities of their ancestors, the Border " reivers."
But especially, while the Duke of Atholl and Lord
Breadalbane were in reality protecting their own inter-
ests, the Duke of Buccleuch (whom we only take as the
readiest instance that comes) was in similar circum-
stances to those indicated ])y the poet Thomson, when

112 THE SALMON.

asked why he did not get out of bed till dinner-time —
his Grace had " nae motive." Though the largest pro-
prietor in the district intersected by the Tweed and its
tributaries, he could not, under the late laws, nor pro-
bably even yet, kill a dozen or a score of fish in a season
upon his whole property. And here, as at others of the
tui:ning-points in the inquiry, we come in sight of a
truth which, even in the most recent and improved
legislation, has been too much overlooked, that the law
should have respect to the widely-varying natural cir-
cumstances of rivers.

AVhilst thus pointing out, however, the natural cir-
cumstances which helped to save the rental, though not
the produce, of the Tay from any very great decrease,
we have been working supererogatorily as to the main
point at present in hand — that, if the salmon-fisheries
are now in process of recovery, they had been suffering
a long and disastrous decline up till the legislation of
these two or three years past. In 1828 {i.e., just before
the coming into operation of the disastrous Act which
lengthened the fishing season all over Scotland), the
rental of the Tay was £ 14,000 ; in 1836, it had fallen
to £10,150 ; and in 1852, £7973 was all that remained.
So far, we see that, under the laws and management we
are arraigning, the Tay, in spite of some favouring
special circumstances, suffered pretty much like its
neighbours ; and it is only so far that the Tay was
managed like its neighbours. About 1852, the Tay
proprietors saw that the law was a mistake ; that it was
trying to take out of the goose that laid their golden
eggs more than was in her ; and they resolved among

DECAY OF SALMON. 113

themselves (with the exception of two or three of the
smaller p]'opri(.^tors) to atop fishing, as formerly, on the
26th of August, though leaving rod-fishing to continue
till 14th September. This voluntary reform or suspen-
sion of the law continued, with improving fisheries and
rising rents, till 1855, when one of the upper proprietors
broke up the agreement, on the ground that the re
cusancy of some of the lowest proprietors was still per-
sisted in. The law of 1828 then resumed its sway, and
the dechne, arrested by the suspension of the law, re-
sumed also. In 1858, the great majority of the pro-
prietors united in going to Parliament for a local Act,
and obtained one, stopping the net-fishing on the 26 th
August, and extending the privileges of the rod-fisheries.
Immediately, the rent once more began to rise — having
been less than £8000 when the former law was in opera-
tion, it rose to nearly £13,000 in 1859, and is now
above £15,000. Thus, when looked at below the surface,
even the apparently exceptional case of the Tay goes to
prove the fact of an enormous decrease having taken
place in the annual supply of salmon, and, moreover,
the facts that that decrease was caused mainly by bad
laws, and can be to a large extent cured by good.

Having seen, as closely and as precisely as the
scarcity of materials will permit, and as is necessary for
present purposes, what have been the periods and what
the extent of the decrease, we come next to the causes
actual and alleged, and after that shall come to the cures
attempted and desirable. For it is a notable feature in
the question, that, to a great extent, the cures do not
consist in the removal of the causes. Some of the

H

114 THE SALMON.

causes are irremovable ; while, on the other hand, there
are practicable and efficient cures quite independent of
the causes.

One and the chief of irremovable causes is the in-
crease of land drainage. Salmon do not incline to
enter, nor even though they may have entered to ascend,
a river, either when it is in high flood, "roaring from
bank to brae," nor when it is dwindled and limpid, but
when it is between these two conditions, subsiding, and
in some degree clarifying. Now, the effect of increased
drainage — by which we refer, not so much to the drains
of the arable districts as to the open " sheep drains" of
the pastoral districts at the water sources — is to bring
down the water more quickly, and in greater volume,
and tlien to carry it seaward with greater rapidity ; thus
making addition to the two extreme conditions of
water in which fish do not incline to travel, and making
deduction from that happy medium which is their
choice, and which is now, like Lear's wit, " pared o' both
sides till little is left in the middle." Taking Scotland
generally, the average of the statements as to the de-
crease in the period of what is called the "travelling
condition" may be taken at one-half; — on the Tweed
it has been considerably more. One consequence of
this change is, that the fish are kept longer hanging
about the mouths of the rivers, where, besides the num-
bers taken in the stake and bag nets, they fall a prey
to their natural marine enemies ; and also, we would
suggest, are likely, after repeated failures in getting up
the river, to dwindle and die — in the same way that they
are known to do in the converse case of being prevented,

DECAY OF SALMON. 115

at their appointed season, from getting down again to
the sea. It is obvious also, that the changes caused by
drainage must tend to an increase in the destruction of
ova — the greater suddenness and violence of the flood
washing the spawn away when in process of deposition,
or even after its being covered ; the greater height of
the flooded water tempting the spawning fish (which
always seeks the shallows) to deposit its ova in higher
and therefore more exposed positions ; and the lower
and more rapid subsidence of the waters increasing such
perils as desiccation and frost. Except the Inspecting
Commissioners of Fisheries for Ireland, who some years
ago spoke hopefully of the " expected increase of drain-
age, with its consequent facilities for migration V no
man doubts that what has here been stated is accurate
to a greater or less extent ; and the more a man inquires
and watches, the more will he tend towards the con-
clusion, that this cause of decrease, whilst it is unfor-
tunately irremovable, is also very considerable.

It may be said, and indeed has been said, in Parlia-
mentary Committees and elsewhere, that diminution from
such a cause does not give the owners of fisheries any
claim to popular sympathy or legislative aid, because it
has been in improving their land that they have dete-
riorated their waters. But, in the first place, it is not
chiefly the fishery-owners, but the public, that have lost ;
and it would be no reasonable objection to benefiting the
public, at no expense to anybody whatever, that you do
so through more especially benefiting certain persons or
classes. In the second place, it is not the drainage of
the land having immediate frontage to the river that

116 THE SALMON.

lias produced these results, but the drainage of all the
land in the country, and in the chief degree the land in
high-lying districts at the sources of the rivulets or burns,
in almost none of which are there any salmon, and in
none any ownership of salmon-fisheries. In the third
place, the owners of salmon-fisheries, in Scotland at least,
are not ordinarily, and are never necessarily, the owners
also of land, either close on the river or elsewhere ;
salmon-fisheries in Scotland, as already stated, not being
an appurtenance of the land, but a separate property, of
course with separate management and interests.

The next cause of decrease requiring mention is one
which has been too readily assumed to he irremovable, —
obstructions and 2^oUutions consequent on the rise of
population and industry on the banks of rivers. The
existence and extent of this cause need no detailed
proof, for wherever it gets fairly or unfairly into full
operation, it soon results, not in mere decay, but in
extermination, which everybody can see, and nobody can
deny. Multitudes of rivers in England have been long
ago utterly depopulated (the Thames among them) ;
others (such as the Tyne) reduced to shadows of their
former selves ; and even in Scotland there have already
been extermination in some rivers, vast injury in others,
and in all rivers not already past praying for, threats of
further evil, every day increasing in magnitude and im-
minence. The chief case of entire extinction in Scotland
is that of the Clyde, in prophetic allusion to which, per-
haps, it is that the heraldic arms of the city of Glasgow
comprise a salmon, with a ring in its nose, and literally
" up a tree." The South Esk, in Forfarshire, is also stated

DECAY OF SALMON. 117

to be luisteiiiug to the same end from similar causes.
That part of the evil which consists in obstructions can
be easily removed, or at least greatly alleviated. That
which consists of pollution is more difficult to deal with,
but it demands and must very soon receive abatement,
on considerations even more important than the preserv-
ation of salmon, though that may seem to be a strong
expression.

The killing of spaiv7img Jish in close-time has been
and is a great cause of decrease, but it can scarcely be
regarded as a cause of the decrease within the dates
at which we are now chiefly looking. This destruc-
tive practice is not new and increasing, but old and
diminishing ; and it is plain that we cannot ascribe an
increased and increasing effect to a diminished and dimin-
ishing cause. ]]ut, though this practice cannot account
for the decrease in the number of fish compared with
former periods, it is no less true that it is a great evil,
the suppression of which would bring about an improve-
ment on our present returns. It is, indeed, to the
diminution of this practice of late years that we chiefly
ascribe the fact of the supply of grilse or young fish
having been so well maintained during the last twenty-
live or thirty-five years, in spite of the increased severity
of the fishing, shown by the rapidly diminishing number
of the fish which are allowed to come to the adult
stage.

Another cause of decrease has been the brevity or mis-
timing of the close season. Up to 1 8 5 8 there were three
different close seasons in Scotland — for the Solway (with
several differences for the different rivers emptying

118 THE SALMON.

themselves into that firth) ; for tlie Tweed ; and fur the

rivers north of Tweed. There is no reasonable doubt

that in all these cases the fishing was (at least as to

Scotland generally, in the period subsequent to 1828,

when an Act, known as Home Drummond's Act, was

passed, shifting the beginning of the close season from

the 26tliof August to the 14th of September) allowed to

continue too long or too late. The river that was fished

longest and latest was the Tweed (till 14th October),

and it showed by far the greatest and most rapid

decline. There is as little doubt that the application of

the same rules regarding season to rivers difi'ering very

widely from each other in their natural circumstances,

and in the habits of their fish, was a most pernicious

mistake. As a Highland laird very aptly expriessed it,

thirty years ago, to a Parliamentary Committee, " To

prohibit early rivers from beginning till late ones are

ready, is as sensible a plan as it w^ould be to prohibit the

farmers of England from cutting their crops till the

harvest was ready in the Highlands." We do not mean,

and are not of opinion, that there is much difterence

between rivers as to the end of the season — the season

at which a greater or less proportion of the fish begin to

get gravid and out of condition. The reference is to

the beginning of the season ; for there are very great

differences between rivers regarding the periods in late

winter or early spring at which they contain clean fish

in quantities sufficient to render fishing profitable, and

have got rid in any considerable degree of the foul fish,

spawned and unspawned. To speak of " early rivers''

and " late rivers" is a mistake, if the allusion is to the

DECAY OF SALMON. 119

earliness or lateness at which the lish begin to spawn ;
if the reference is to the earliness or lateness of the period
at which fishing can be profitably and providently begun,
a more accurate description would be " short-seasoned"
and " long-seasoned." There is another sense, too, in
which these epithets would apply ; rivers differ greatly
in the length of their spawning seasons, as well as of
their proper fishing seasons — those which are late in
getting a supply of clean fish in the beginning of the
legal fishing season being generally late also as to the
end, though not as to the beginning, of the spawning-
season. In Tweed, for instance, the spawning begins
about the same time as in other rivers, but continues
much longer. For these differences several causes could
be suggested : such as differences in the distances of the
spawning-beds from the sea, and in the amount of
natural obstacles to ascent ; but it is enough for present
purposes to know that such is the fact, and that it is a
fact which has received but little attention in the making
of laws, either old or new. At the same time, there are
some considerable practical difficulties in the way of
havinoj a close-time varied for various rivers ; and the
main facts that great evil has been caused by too long
and too late fishing, and that there has been a want of
variety as to legal seasons, have been to some extent
acknowledged by the recent Acts, which shorten the fish-
ing season as a whole, and give the Commissioners very
considerable power as to varying the period of opening
or closing. Theoretically, indeed, the close times of the
English rivers had been from old times endlessly varied
under local Acts, and under a general Act giving cer-

120 THE SALMON.

tain powers regarding seasons to the Quarter Sessions —
powers, however, which, mainly from ignorance and care-
lessness, if also from selfishness, were greatly abused. In
almost all cases also, the English fishing was too long and
too late, and the imperfections of the law were greatly
aggravated by its being almost universally disregarded.
For more than twenty years, Ireland has been more
favourably situated in this respect than the other two
kingdoms, having, under the Act of 1842, had its seasons
both much shortened and judiciously varied by the Com-
missioners, the benefit of which arrangements proved
almost sufficient to counterbalance the evils wrought by
other causes.

We come now, however, to the grand cause of the
general decrease, w^hich is partly included in the cause
just dealt with, but may be roundly expressed by the
term over-Jishmg. This over-fishing has been of two
kinds, and to some extent of two dates. In the first
place, by the old and ordinary mode of net-and-coble, in
the lower or nettable portions of rivers, which brought
about the earlier of two declensions ; next, by the com-
paratively new mode of stake and bag nets on the coast,
which, co-operating with the continued overworking of
the former system, has mainly produced the more
recent decline.

First, as to the diminution caused through the over-
fishing by the old or ordinary modes. That the efiiciency
or severity of the fishing would increase as the demand
and the prices rose with the advance in population and
means of transport, was to be expected. One piece of
evidence that the work was overdone — that the killing

DECAY OF SALMON. 121

was going for ahead of the breeding — before any bhxme
could be imputed to fixed or standing nets, will be found
in whatever portion of the Tweed statistics given above
is of older date than 1824. And the facts from Tweed
we have found to correspond with those from other
rivers.

Statements which it may be necessary to touch in
passing, have been put forth to the effect that the net-
fishing within the Tweed was not so severe nine or ten
years ago as it had been twenty or thirty years before ;
that is, before the period of the general decline. That
fact, however, does not necessarily mean more than that
the cause preceded the effect. Then, if some stations were
abandoned, it still remained true that every station that
would pay was still fished to the utmost, and that, owing
to the rise in price, the number of fish that made a pay-
ing station was much smaller than formerly. Moreover,
is there not a good deal in the fact that all but one or
two of the lower fisheries of the Tweed are now in the
hands of the same lessees, and that, where fish can be
got at any of several stations, they work only what
stations seem necessary, and do not set their right hand
to compete with their left ?

Some peculiar circumstances in the history of the
Tay furnish us with demonstrative evidence of the serious
consequences of an increase in the frequency or efficiency
of net-and-coble fishing. About 1835, there came into
operation an Act, called the Tay Navigation Act, one
effect of which was, by the removal of obstructions, to
give, on the whole, increased facilities for the working of
the nets on the fisheries within tideway. The following

122 THE [SALMON.

abstract of a return regarding the tislieries of two pro-
prietors, generally reckoned as possessing one-half of the
entire fisheries of the tideway, show the result : —
Tkn Years (1825-34) before Navigation Act.

Salmon,

Grilse.

Greatest year,

9,731

18,071

Smallest year.

3,920

8,622

Total of the ten years,

67,151

128,188

Annual average,

6,715

12,818

Ten Years (1836-

45) afu

T Navigation Act.

Salmon.

Grilse.

Greatest year.

12,123

24,603

Smallest year,

4,704

8,070

Total of the ten years,

85,899

133,348

Annual average,

8,589

13,335

So far so well. But take the fishings just next above
those ; which, from being beyond the tideway, and above
Perth Bridge, did not partake in the benefits of the
Navigation Act. In the same period during which the
two tideway fisheries, by their improved working, had
increased as the Table shows, their neighbours next
above had suffered a decrease of nearly fifty per cent. !
This shows what increased efficiency in the use of the
net-and-coble can do, and indicates what it actually did,
without aid from the fixed nets, in decreasing the num-
ber of fish previously permitted to ascend and breed.

In coming to the second species of over-fishing,-
fishing by fixed or standing-nets, — we come to the chief
culprit ; and liave got evidence against him both curious
and conclusive.

Fishing by stake and bag nets (the former being a
species of net hung on stakes driven into the beach, with
the cells or traps a little beyond low water, and the*

DECAY OF .SALMON. 12 3

latter being a species kept stationary by anchorage, and
ordinarily reaching some hundreds of feet beyond low
water) is an invention only about thirty or forty years
old, as regards at least the places in Scotland where it is
now practised ; while, as regards England and Ireland, it
is of still more recent date. It is not only novel, it may
be said to exist only through the omission or ignorance
of the Legislature. The chief aim of legislation on the
subject, both in England and Scotland, from ]\Iagna
Charta downwards, has been to prevent the raising of
" standing-gear" in " the run of the fish ;" but this pro-
hibition did not extend to the sea-coast, partly, perhaps,
because that was not then known to be " the run of the
fish," and partly because no sort of engine had at that
time been invented capable of standing and acting effec-
tively in the open sea. It has since, however, been dis-
covered,— and most diligently has the discovery been
put to use, — that the sea-coast is almost as much the
course of the fish as is the channel of the river or estuary.
The salmon returning to the fresh water does not lie off
in mid-ocean, and then, as with a needle and compass,
steer right into the river's mouth. It feels, or, as Sir
Humphry Davy expressed it to the Committee of 1824,
scents its way along the shore for many miles. The
distance from the river of which they are in search, or
from any river, at which salmon begin, in nautical
plirase, to " hug the shore," is greater than seems gener-
ally believed, even l)y those who have paid some atten-
tion to the subject. A sail along almost any portion of
the coast of Scotland— say that long stretch from Buchan-
ness to Fortrose — will show that the shore is draped with

124 THE SALMON.

salmon-nets, with very little regard to the neighbour-
hood or distance of a river. To take a single illustration,
we see in our mind's eye (but of course we speak of an
actual case) a line of coast running out into a bold pro-
montory, then trending inwards to form a bay five miles
indented. In the inmost corner of that bay stands a
productive stake-net fishery, although there is at the
place no run of fresh water which would afibrd passage
to a minnow, and no salmon river debouches within sixty
miles. Here (and the fact is one of a multitude) it is
proved that even in the absence of any contiguous river,
the salmon not only keep the shore, but follow its deep-
est and most sinuous indentations. The fact was tardily
and partially recognised by the Legislature in the Act
(7 and 8 Victoria, cap. 95) which prohibits any but the
proprietor of the fishery from taking salmon " in any
part of the sea within a mile of low-water imivk, in
Scotland." This recognises the fact of the fish following
the shore, but leaves unrestrained the misdoings or (what
in this case is the same thing), the over-doings, of those
who have taken such merciless advantage of the privilege
they (we may say) accidentally possess.

In proving the destructiveness of fixed nets, we shaU
confine ourselves chiefly to two pieces of evidence, differ-
ing, as will be seen, in their character, but Ijoth leading
clearly to conviction. Owing to legal doubts as to the
precise nature of the localities in which standing-engines
were prohibited by the old Scotch Statutes, fixed nets
were erected in the Firth of the Tay in 1799, and, after
much litigation, were finally declared illegal in 1812.
The following figures — being an abstract of returns for

DECAY OF SALMON. 125

two fisheries forming in value a half of the whole Tay,
and situated immediately above the highest of the fixed-
net fisheries — tell tlieir own story very forcibly : —

Ten Years (1788-97) before Stake-Nets.

Salmon.

Grilse.

Greatest year,

18,069

3,396

Smallest year,

7,372

586

Total of the ten years.

108,747

22,107

Annual average.

10,874

2,211

Ten Years (1801-1

0).

hiring Stake- Nets.

Salmon.

Grilse.

Greatest year,

14,845

4,766

Smallest year.

4,003

1,390

Total of the ten years.

G6,990

24,300

Animal average,

6,700

2,429

Ten Years (1815-

.24)

aftei- Stake

-Nets.

Salmon.

Grilse.

Greatest year.

22,49.5

16,755

Smallest year.

6,266

6,142

Total of the ten years,

113,168

112,204

Annual average.

.

11,316

11,220

These facts speak for themselves, or rather against
themselves. The numljer of salmon taken at these two
stations, forming, as we have said, one-half in value of
the whole fisheries of the Tay, wg.s reduced one-third by
the erection of stake-nets at the neighbouring fisheries,
and again reached and greatly overpassed its former
amount on their removal. The rent, it need hardly l)e
observed, altered accoixlingly. In addition, we may
mention that the number of boxes (each box containing
about 100 pounds of fish) shipped from the river-fisheries
of the Tay in 181 2, the last year of the stake-nets, was

126 THE SALMON.

1175; in 1819, after they had been completely re-
moved, 5694.

It may be said, that these were stake-nets in an
illegal position, and therefore not furnishing a fair cri-
terion. Without leaving the same river, we can adduce
other facts not open to this cavil. After the suppression
of the nets in the estuary of Tay, in 1812, they began
to be erected on the open or ocean-coast of Forfarshire
about 1821, and were in effective numbers about 1825.
With what result ? On the two extensive fisheries which
we have been using for data, the take fell nearly half in
the ten years following, sinking to a very little more
than the amount to wdiich it had been reduced during
the operation of the stake-nets in the river. The num-
ber of salmon taken annually at one of those two fisheries
had never been less than 10,000 for four years previous
to the erection of the fixed nets on the coast ; it never
once reached that number in the thirty years that fol-
lowed. And, notwithstanding the increased productive-
ness of a portion of the net-and- coble fisheries occasioned
by the Tay Navigation Act (as shown above), the total
river rental was, until legislative remedy came at another
point, one-fourth less than it was before the erection of
the stake-nets twenty or forty miles off on the sea-shore.
These facts go a long way to establish that fixtures on
the shores are not much less effectively in the run of the
fish than fixtures in the rivers. And we have even less
exceptionable evidence to the same effect.

A local bill, called the Tweed Act, passed in 1830,
prohibited all " bar-nets" within five miles south, and
four miles north of the river, which has the peculiarity

DECAY OF SALMON. 127

of having no estuary, but changing at once from river to
ocean. Passing over some attempts to erect fixed nets
within these limits, by taking advantage of the looseness
of the phrase "bar-nets,"' we go on to state that during
the period of years of which we have chiefly spoken, there
were not any fixed nets in the Tweed district, except
beyond the limits mentioned. Yet the number of salmon
and grilse taken in two small clusters of nets, occupying
only a few yards of beach, and removed along the open
shore of the German Ocean five miles from the river,
and from any run of water or indentation of coast in-
dicating its neighbourhood, used to be nearly one-half
of the whole number taken in Tweed !

It will be observed that our statement regarding
these fixed nets on the Tweed coast omits mention of
trouts {Sahno eriox) — and thereby hangs a strange, but,
on examination, significant fact. On an average of
twenty years, the number of trout taken annually in
the river was about equal to the take of grilse, and about
four times the take of salmon : in these coast-nets, on
the contrary, the take of trout used to reach only about
a ninth of the take of grilse, and a fourth of the take
of salmon. In other words, the net-and-coble took three
or four trouts for every salmon, while the fixed nets
took three or four salmon and nine or ten grilses for one
trout. The local fishermen explain the disparity by a
difference in the habits or instincts of the two species
of fish. The salmon or grilse, when he strikes the leader
of the standing-net, foUows it out into the trap or cham-
bers ; the trout — whether it is that he is naturally more
acute, or that, though of smaller size, he is ordinarily of

128 THE SALMON.

greater age, and therefore of more knowledge of the
world, even the fishermen cannot tell — flies, not along
the leader, but back from it, and so greatly increases his
chances of escape. Now, look at the above Table of the
produce of the Tweed from 1811 downwards, and it will
be seen that the average proportion of trouts to salmon,
during the earliest quinquennial period comprised in it,
was as three to four ; in the later quinquennial period,
as four to one ! In the first year included in the return
(which we have ascertained to have shown the same pro-
portions as several years preceding it), we see 38,500
salmon to 12,400 trouts, or more than three salmon to
one trout : in 1856, 30,597 trouts to 4885 salmon, or
more than six trouts to one salmon ! This immense
change in the proportion l3etween the kind of fish that
the fixed nets spare, and the kind that they capture, is
of obvious significancy.

In further illustration of this curious fact, we are
enabled to state with precision the proportion of all the
three divisions of the salmon kind taken in different
descriptions of nets in and near the Tweed, on the aver-
age of the last four years in the above table. For every
100 salmon, the stake and bag nets five miles from the
river took 234 grilse and only 30 trouts; the fisheries
on the sea-shore close to the river mouth, for every 100
salmon took 293 grilse and 99 trouts; but on entering
the river, the proportion up to Berwick Bridge was to
every 100 salmon 378 grilse and 451 trouts. In other
words, the shore-nets took more than three salmon for
every trout ; the nets within the river took four and a
half trouts for every salmon.

DECAY OF SALMON. 120

There are plenty of proofs to the same effect ; since
the erection of fixed engines on the coasts of Aberdeen
and Kincardine, the annual value of the produce of the
rivers Dee and Don has sunk by £18,000 ; and under
the operation of similar causes in the Moray Firth, the
produce of the Beauly sank two-thirds, and of the Ness,
three-fourths.

What of that, it may be said, as to the question of
the total supply provided for the public ? Some pro-
prietors may have greatly gained to the loss of others,
but the public are no worse. But that is only part of the
story ; the supply to the public has 7iot been increased,
but has been greatly decreased, it being of the nature of
these wasteful engines to tend fast to self-destruction,
after and sometimes before having destroyed their neigh-
bours. When there were fixed nets on the fisheries of
the Duke of Richmond at the mouth of the Spey, he
could not get £6000 of rent for all his fisheries ; he put
down the fixtures, and now gets £13,000. Or take the
north-west coast of Sutherland. Bag-nets were intro-
duced there about thirty years ago ; for the first half of
the period daring which they lasted they prospered
splendidly ; during the latter half, they fell away to
worthlessness. In the season of 1839 they produced
upwards of 16,000 salmon; in the season of 1850,
although the number of bag-nets on the same extent of
coast had been doubled, they produced only 130 0 : in
other words, they sunk to a twelfth, oi', allowing for the
engines of capture having been doubled in numbe]-, to a
twenty-fourth. These nets, which paid an annual rent
of £900 to the Duke of Sutherland, were then entirely

I

130 THE SALMON.

abandoned. The fixed-net fisheries on the firths of Moray
and Beauly, which more than half exhausted the rivers
there emptying themselves, are now, some of them, given
up as unprofitable, and others dwindled to a trifle, partly
from having been " fished out" by new fixtures farther
seaward, partly from the general decline in the number
of fish, caused by over-fishing.

The same story has to be told of the eft'ect of stake and
bag nets in England and Ireland, though in both these
countries those eupines are of more recent introduction

o

than even in Scotland. In Ireland the effects were so
rapid and visil)le as to produce both popular tumults
and ultimately something that comes pretty near to
legislative prohibition. The reports of the English In-
spectors of Salmon-Fisheries are full of statements of the
mischief wrought 1)y these devices : for instance, in their
Second Report (1863), they say of a fishery on the Esk
in Cumberland :— " Before stake-nets were introduced it
w^as let for £300, but with their increase its value dimin-
ished ; in 1840 it let for £100, and its rent varied from
that sum to £70, and last year it was let at £50 only."
Still stronger instances of the same kind might have
been adduced from the same district. The Solway, on
its Scotch shore, is (as we shall have occasion to mention
more fully hereafter) the l)irthplace of that kind of stake-
net that was afterwards found capaljle of being made
to stand and work upon the open sea-shore : and the
Solway also affords the most conclusive evidence, not
only of the unfair, l)ut of th(^ ultimately self-destructive
operations of these engines. The first stake-net on the
Solway — i.e., the first fixed net with leaders and cham-

DECAY OF SALMON. 131

bers — was erected at a place called Newby, a short dis-
tance west of the mouth of the Annan, in 1788. Up
till that time, the rent of the Newby fishery had been
only £16, whilst the rents of the fisheries farther up the
firth amounted to several hundreds of pounds. In a few
years the rent of the Newby fishery, formerly £16, was
£2000 ! whilst its upper neighbours sank to a mere
fraction of their former value. Here was a great transfer
of property, and then came a great destruction of pro-
perty. The Newby example was copied ; the firth was
over-fished ; the rent of Newby is now little more than
a tenth of what it was ; and its neighbours, though they
did not participate in its prosperity, have shared in its
decay ; for instance, a fishery which used to yield the
Corporation of Carlisle a rent of £722 when salmon sold
at 2d. a pound, now yields a rent of only £55 when
salmon sell at as many shillings a pound. In a word,
the "improved engines" have not only reduced the total
produce of the firth and its rivers, but have reduced
the total money value far below the amount at which
it stood when ten tons of the produce brought no more
money than one ton brings now.

The evidence from all parts of England laid before
the English Commissioners of Inquiry (i860) was so
strong that they reported : " We are prepared, after a
full consideration of the case, to recommend the total
suppression by law of all fixed engines ; " and in the
same year a Committee of the House of Lords, appointed
in the interest and on the instigation of the owners of
fixed engines, also reported in favour of abolition.

It will be seen at a glance that this comparatively

132 THE SALMON.

novel mode of fishing operates powerfully as a transfer
of fishing property ; but for the present purpose what is
required to be noted is, that it causes a great increase of
fishing, which tends to produce, and has long ago pro-
duced, a great decrease of fish. What these new or
additional fisheries kill, or rather did kill before they
succeeded in half eating up themselves as well as their
neighbours, was not merely the fish which the older
fisheries lost, but all these and for some time a great
many besides. These nets were a clear addition to the
means of destruction ; and while they left fewer fish
to be destroyed by the formerly existing means, they
left also fewer to live for the purpose of multiplying and
replenishing the waters.

There is another mode besides over-killing in which
fixed engines work evil, of which we have said but little,
not because it is unimportant, but because it does not
admit of positive evidence. We can count how many
fish they kill, but we cannot see how many they frighten
back and out, to become the prey of seals and porpoises.
" These engines," said the English Commissioners of In-
quiry, " are baneful to the fisheries, not only on account
of the number of fish which they destroy, but also because
they scare and drive them away to sea, when they come
in shoals seeking the rivers, thereby exposing them to be
injured or destroyed in a variety of ways." The fact
here set forth is recognised in all the old legislation,
which prohiljits fixtures in the rivers and estuaries, on
account not so much of their success in capturing, as of
their effect in deterring and frightening ; any " white
object," though incapable of anything but scaring, being

DECAY OF SALMON. 133

prohibited equally with engines of capture. If objects
in an estuary, striking merely the eye of a salmon,
frighten him back to the sea, a similar effect is more
than Hkely to follow from his running against miles of
posts and nets whenever he tries to take his natural
course along the coast to the river. If the merely
wasteful effects of fixed engines do not admit of such
explicit evidence as their destructive or devouring effects,
they admit of just as little doubt as to their existence,
and of no doubt at all as to their indefensibleness.

134 THE SALMON.

CHAPTER IV.

SALMON LEGISLATION.'

Principles of all Salmon Legislation — Ancient Legislation — Its Curiosities-
Suspension of Legislation — Renewal upon the Old Principles — Differ-
ence between Agricultural and Fishery Property — The Duke of Rox-
burghe — Upper and Lower Proprietors— Harmlessness of Angling — The
Tweed Acts of 1857 and 1859— The Tay Act of 1858— Ness and Beauly
Bill of 1860— Committee of the House of Lords — Royal Commission of
Inquiry for England — General Scotch Bill of 1861— General Scotch Act
of 1862— English Act of 1861— Irish Acts of 1842 and 1862.

For more than six hundred years the preservation or
increase of Salmon has been the subject of legislation in
all the three kingdoms ; and from the first, as now, the
leading principle of legislation has been to prevent the
fisheries being worked in excess of the natural powers of
reproduction. From of old too, as now, that principle
has been applied mainly to two points — to prevent the
fisheries being worked for a season either too long or
mistimed, and to prevent any of them being worked

1 It is not attempted in this chapter to give more than a sketch of the
history and present condition of the laws regarding Salmon ; much more
full and precise statement would be required for the guidance of persons
having duties or direct interests luider the Statutes. The wdiole of the Acts
now in operation, accompanied by much useful historical and expository
matter, vi'ill be found iu a recent work, A Treatim on the Fishery Laws oj
the United Kingdom, including the Laws of Angling, by James Paterson,
Esq., Barrister-at-Law ; and still more minute information as to the Irish
part of the subject is given by Mr. Longfield, Q.C., M.P., in a fourth edition
of his book, The Fishery Laws of Ireland.

SALMON LEGISLATION. 185

unfairly or too severely in respect to machinery, as by
engines more effective in capture than the engines ordi-
narily in use, or operating to obstruct and deter as well
as to capture. In other words, the fixing of the proper
duration and dates of close-time, and the regulation or
prohibition of obstructive, destructive, and especially
fixed engines, were the objects aimed at six centuries
ago, and are objects not quite attained even yet.

Magna Charta had two clauses concerning salmon —
one prohibiting the further "defending" or appropria-
tion of fisheries by the Crown or its grantees, and the
other suppressing all weirs or " cruives," " except only
by the sea-coast" (an exception of which the meaning is
dubious, and which practically came to nothing). Long-
anterior to this, however, the common law of Eno-
land had been found to prohibit all devices which
affected salmon-fisheries either in the way of obstruc-
tion or of monopoly — in the words of C. J. Ellen-
borough, " they were reprobated as public nuisances in
the earliest periods of our law ;" and the clauses in
Magna Charta were intended to check the Crown in its
attempts to disregard the law as it had long before been
declared and acted on. A few years after Magna Charta,
an Act passed fixing the close-times ; other ancient Acts,
both public and private, varied the regulations in that
matter; and up till 1861, the close-times of several
English rivers were regulated by Acts of Richard il,
which had been in force, at least nominally, for nearly
five hundred years. In the reign of Henry lu., both
the common law and the statute-law of England were
extended to Ireland by royal ordinance ; and at intervals

136 THE SALMON.

up to the end of the eighteenth century, all new English
salmon Statutes were also, by Poyning's law, extended
to Ireland.

In Scotland, which, both in ancient and still more in
modern days, may be regarded as the country principally
concerned, legislation l)egan almost as soon, and pro-
ceeded on the same principle, and towards the same ends,
or against the same evils, as in England and Ireland. The
commencement of Scotch law-making on this subject,
indeed, was contemporary with the commencement of
anything like a settled order of affairs under Kobert
Bruce, and continued to occupy an incredible share of the
attention of the Parliaments of his successors for several
hundreds of years ; so that, in reading the collections of
ancient Scottish Statutes, one is apt to think that the chief
thinor which Scotland achieved on the field of Bannock-

o

burn was "Acts anent the preservation of Salmonde." Old
Scotch Acts refer to the preservation of the "reidfische"
by means of a close-time ; to the removal of all standing
obstructions to the run of the fish, whether meant to
capture, or only fitted to impede ; and to the measure,
weights, prices, and other conditions of sale. Nothing
can be better put than the reason given over and over
again in the Scotch Statutes four hundred years ago, for
putting down unseasonable fishing and fixed engines —
such practices " destroy the breed of fish, and hurt the
commoun profite of the realme." The rigour of these
old Statutes is as remarkable as their number. For in-
stance, an Act of the first Parliament of James i. (of
Scotland), 26th May 1424, runs thus : — "Quha sa ever
be convict of slauchter of Salmonde in time forbidden

SALMON LEGISLATION. 137

be the law, lie sail pay fourtie shillings for the unlaw,
and at the third time, gif he be convict of sik trespasse,
he sail tyne his life, or then bye it;" Anglice, he shall
either lose his life, or pay for it. The alternative is a
strange one, and all the more strange that the price is
not specified. It would be curious to know how the
forfeited fife of a salmon-poacher was appraised, — whether
such things as rank, wealth, and age were taken into
account, or whether all Scotchmen were taken at an
average value ; also, whether, Scotchmen themselves
being the appraisers, the average was put exceed-
ingly high. But after all, whatever the price demanded,
there could not be much debating in any oliender's
mind which of the two to choose. What will a man
give for his life ? Of course, all that he hath. If a man
indeed have nothing to give, as is pretty generally the
case, at least now-a-days, with " slauchterers of salmonde
in tyme forbidden," the case must have ended fatally ;
and at this distant period we can only console ourselves
with the reflection, that the local descendants and re-
presentatives of those ill-starred slaughterers of the olden
time now enjoy an impunity which, perhaps, brings the
average sufferings of the race to something like an
equality with their average deserts. In the whole mass
of Scotch legislation on the subject, we find only one
instance of exemption or relaxation, and it is one which
English readers cannot fail to admire : the ninth Parlia-
ment of James i., 1429, passed an Act : — " Owt-takand,"
i.e., excepting from the other Acts regarding salmon
preservation, " the waters of Solway and Tweede,
quhilkis sal be reddie to all Scottis-men all times of the

IP. 8 THE SALMON.

yier, als lang as Berwick and Roxburgh ar in the English
mennis hands." That is to say, the Scottish King and
his Estates solemnly passed an act, authorizing and en-
joining all Scottis-men to go a poaching in England,
and in those portions of the Border waters in which,
though properly Scotch, the English had or occasionally
took an interest. And not only were Scotchmen legally
authorized to take English salmon, l^ut if Englishmen
wanted Scotch salmon, then " it is ordained that na
Scottis-man sell to Englishmen, or in England before-
hand, or otherwaies, ony salmonde, bot that English-
men bye them in Scotland for English gold, and none
other contentation ; And gif the English-men will not
bye them, the Scottis merchandes may send them in
Flanders or other places, quhair them thinkis : swa that
of na wise they nouther sende them nor sell them in
England."

After the Reformation, the Scotch iVcts anent " Sal-
monde" by no means decreased in number, but are found
alternating with what was then a new feature in the Scotch
Statute-book : " Acts anent the trew an holy kirk, and
them that are declared not to be of the samin" (same) ;
" Discharge of labouring of Sabbath dayes, or playing or
drinking in the time of sermon ;" " Anent the zouth and
uthers beyond sea suspected to have declined fra treu
religion ;" and so on. This curiously mingled legislation
for the spirit and for the fish (flesh was then a com-
paratively rare article of diet north of the Tweed), we
find going on as long as the Scotch Parliament lasted,
with what results is a question only one-half of which
it is within our province to discuss. With one of the

SALMON LEGISLATION. 139

departments, the spiritual and moral, we have nothing

to do, still less to object to,- the foe and the strangei-,

the heretic and the scoffer, may indeed imagine that they
spy defe(;ts ; but it is perhaps enough that we Scotch
ourselves claim a great success, and that indeed our
satisfaction is so complete that it can neither be aug-
mented by the assent nor shaken by the sneers of our
neighbours. As to the other department, the piscatory,
one result of that careful and repeated law-making in
the old times has been that through centuries a fish has,
to some extent, been preserved that would otherwise
have been extinguished, and that now we have increased
encouragement for the introduction of such means to
the same ends as have been rendered necessary by the
alterations and extension of the arts of capture, by the
lessons of experience, and by the discoveries in natural
history — especially for the application of the old remedies
to some of the old evils, which have of late years re-
appeared in new forms.

Unhappily, however, the vigilance and activity ot
the Legislature, in all the three kingdoms, and especially
in Scotland, died away, or rather suddenly stopped, and
a great interval has to be passed over before we find the
good work renewed. In truth, till within these two or
three years, there had been no legislation worth mention
for centuries. This statement, though strictly correct,
will astonish many people who liave l)een accustomed to
listen to, or even to perpetrate, jokes upon the frequency,
or almost constancy, of salmon legislation in our own
days, foi" there is a vast amount of popular misappi'ehen-
sion on this point, chiefly from confounding attempt

140 THE SALMON.

with accomplishment, and talking with doing. All sorts
of people have got upon their lips a remark of the late
Sir Eobert Peel, that he " never knew a session of Par-
liament without a salmon bill," and that remark is mider-
stood as meaning that Sir Robert had seen in his day a
great amount of salmon legislation. It has failed to be
observed that he spoke of Bills, not of Acts. If, when
remarkino; that he had never known a session without a
salmon Bill, he had added that neither had he ever known
a session with a salmon Act, he would have come much
nearer to conveying an accurate impression of the facts.
Indeed, during the long period Sir Robert sat in Parlia-
ment, there was not, we rather think, a single Act of
national legislation regarding salmon, except the Irish
Act of 1842, and the comparatively unimportant and
purely mischievous Scotch Act (" Home Drummond's")
of 1828. The true inferences, therefore, to be drawn
from the fact that many proposals for salmon legislation
came before Parliament during a long period in modern
times, are, that there was a wide-spread conviction that
something required to be done ; perhaps some difficulty
in determining what that something ought to be ; and
certainly very great difficulty in getting that something,
or anything whatever, actually done. The repeated, but
unanswered calls for a remedy are proofs, not of the in-
effectiveness of remedies, but of the existence of disease.
It is important to note that the recent legislation has
proceeded, as the future legislation is proposed to pro-
ceed, on precisely the same principles as the ancient
legislation — viewing similar things as evils, and apply-
ing similar restrictions as remedies. The principles on

SALMON LEGISLATION. 141

which salmon laws must be construed, in accordance
with the obvious designs of the Legislature from the
beginning till now, were very fairly, though not quite
exhaustively, stated by the present Lord Chancellor, in
a judicial decision given from the Woolsack last year.
He stated that the leading principles and objects which
the Legislature had had in view in all the Statutes,
which might be held as mainly declaratory of the com-
mon law, were these: — "The first was the object of
securing to the salmon a free access from the lower to
the upper fresh waters of the rivers, which are the
natural spawning-grounds of the fish ; the second was
to secure the means of return to the young salmon or
smolt down to the sea ; the third was the prohibiting
the taking of unclean fish during certain periods of the
year when it was out of season as an article of food."
Undoubtedly these have been, and must always be, lead-
ing objects in legislation on this subject ; but it w^ould
have been better that Lord Westbury had stated sepa-
rately and emphatically another object, which, at the
utmost, he only includes as part of one of the three
objects he selects for specification, — the forbidding any
fishery-owner increasing, through ingenious appliances or
otherwise, the efficiency of his instruments to the injury of
his neighbours or of the general interest. It may even
be doubted, indeed, whether Lord Westbury meant to in-
clude this object in the first of the three "principles " he
propounded, for, in another part of his judgment, he
seemed to lay down the doctrine that the owner of a
fishery is entitled to exercise his ingenuity in order to
overcome natural obstacles and render his fishery more

142 THE .SALMON.

productive. But if tliis doctrine were allowed swing, it
would create an entire revolution and ultimate anarchy
in the fishing community ; it would not only enable
the owners of some fisheries, of the smallest or of no
value, to make them more productive than the fisheries
that have always been highest in value, but in some
places it would enable the owners of the lowest fisheries
to keep almost everything to themselves. It is a pecu-
liarity of fishery property that it cannot be used as
absolutely at the owner's disposal, to "make the best
of," like some other kinds of property. A man exercis-
ing ingenuity or industry, working by the most effective
means, and at all seasons, to take as much as possible
out of his own laiid, is free so to do, because, however
much he may take from that source, he is taking nothing
from his neighbours. But a man who exercises ingenuity
and industry to take as many fish as possible out of his
fishery, these fish being travellers, and neither natives nor
residents, makes a proportionate deduction from the share
naturally falling to his neighbours. If his neighbours
did not follow or better his example, they would lose
their share ; if they did, the amount of capture would he
in excess of the recuperative powers of nature, and there
would soon l)e nothing to share. It is a necessity of the
present division and competition of interests in fisheries,
that the law can permit only uniform machinery or a
limited degree of efficiency ; in other words, it is neces-
sary that each owner of a fishery shall not be allowed to
use what he may discover to be tJie most effective means
of taking fish. There is, indeed, as we shall afterwards
try to sliOM', a plan by which this prohibition of ingenuity

SALMON LEGISLATION. 14o

and improvenieiit, necessary under the existing system,
can be got over, — a plan by which the most economical
and most productive machinery may be brought into
operation, not for the benefit of some and the loss of
others, but for the common or proportionate good of all.
in the meanwhile, however, and till the system is re-
formed altogether, there is an absolute necessity for
adhering to the old principle that a proprietor shall not
l^e allowed, by the use of novel or extraordinary ma-
chinery or appliances, to increase his natural advantages
or diminish his natural disadvantages, and so acquire
more than his intended and accustomed part of what is
practically a fixed or limited whole.

While the recent legislative battles have had refer-
ence to the same questions and principles as formed
the subjects of the legislation of old, it has happened that,
partly from the increased value or demand for rod-fishing,
the proprietors of salmon fisheries have, in a rough way,
been of late ranged into two temporarily hostile bodies—
the upper and the lower. With some amount of concession
and compromise, all the recent Acts have been victories
won l)y the upper proprietors, though in some cases the
lowei- timeously surrendered, from a conviction that the
demands of tlie upper were bettei- for both, and though,
in all cases where a battle was fought, the former have
already confessed that they were benefited by defeat.
As to the two divisions — river or upper, and estuary or
lower proprietors — tlie war may thus be said to have
ended to the satisfaction of both parties. There remains,
howevei-, still to be fought a sort of supplementary con-
test,- the battle of lnjth river and estuary against sea,

144 THE SALMON.

or rather of movino; and ancient ao;ainst fixed and novel
machinery, which the recent legislation has in Eng-
land and Ireland put in the way of being settled, and
has in Scotland specifically left over for future and
separate handling, either by legislation or otherwise (of
which anon and apart). But it must not be understood
that, though even the oldest of the various recent acts
of legislation, doing justice to the interests of the upper
proprietors (which are ultimately and substantially the
interests of all), date no further back than 1857, the
battle begun only then or shortly before. Little indeed
had been said, much less done, in England ; and as to
Ireland, though there was a good deal of talk, the at-
tempt at reform scarcely took shape till 1842, the Act
passed in which year was beneficial as to close-time and
general management, but injurious in some other respects.
Looking chiefly to Scotland, it might be said that, at
least from about 1828, the lower proprietors are to be
regarded as having been the parties in possession, and
almost all the Bills, never becoming Acts, which were
before Parliament between 1828 and 185 7, were Bills
more or less in favour of the upper proprietors, and
their rejection formed victories, though very injurious
victories, for the lower. The Act of 1828, known as
Mr. Home Drummond's Act, the first Scotch Act for
two centuries before, and which remained the governing
Act for thirty years afterwards, altered the commence-
ment of close-time in all Scotch rivers north of Tweed
and Solway, from the 26 th August to the 15th Septem-
ber. From about that time — excepting the Tweed, altered
in 1857, and the Tay, altered in 1858 — the following

SALMON LEGISLATION. 145

wore tlie leoiil lisliiuii' seasons of the Scotch and semi-
Scotch rivers till 1863 : — All rivers north of the Tweed
;ind Sohvay, from 1st February to 14th September; the
waters flowing into the Solway Firth, from various
periods between 1st January and 10th March to about
the 25th September, with a protraction in favour of rod-
fishing for various periods — in the case of the Annan,
till 1st November; and the Tweed and its tributaries
from 15th February to 15th October, with three weeks
more for rod-flshing. It should be noticed in passing
that, though these were the legal seasons, some of the
chief fisheries in Scotland were, by the voluntary
act of their OAvners, closed three or four weeks before the
period fixed by law, during a considerable number of
years before the recent Acts. The chief evil of the Act
of 1828 was, that by adding to the length of the net-
fishing season, making the addition at the end of the
season, and fixing no extended time for rod-fishing after
the removal of the nets, it killed a greater quantity of
fish, and did not add to but lessened the inducements
for the better protection, by the upper proprietors, of the
smaller number of fish that reached the breeding grounds.
Hence, a great increase of discontent, and many efforts
after legislative redress, as well as a gradual but great
decrease in the productiveness of the fisheries generally.
Even before the passing of Mr. Home Drummond's
Act, attempts had been made to diminish the amount or
severity of the fishing ; attempts suggested or necessi-
tated chiefly by the scarcity produced by the new coast
nets having been added to the old river nets. Thus, in
1825, a Committee of the House of Commons, presided

K

14G THE SALMON.

over by the Eight Hon. T. F. Kennedy, agreed to a
Report (subsequently eml)odied in an unsuccessful Bill),
recommending almost all the improvements that have
become law only about forty years afterwards, — lengthen-
ing of the annual and weekly close-times, removal of
obstructions, widening of meshes, suppression of leister-
ing, etc. It is wonderful that, in three years after
such a report, Parliament should have quietly passed
a Bill, like Mr. Home Drummond's, going in quite
the opposite direction. It is not wonderful that that
pernicious change was soon felt and complained of
In 1835, the late Mr. P. M. Stewart and the late Mr.
James Loch introduced a Bill giving the majority of
proprietors, in number and value, on each river the
power of fixing the season, but providing that net-fishing
should in no case be continued after 31st August, and
that rod-fishing should be permitted for three weeks after
the withdrawal of the nets. Next year, the same mem-
bers tried a Bill, dividing Scotland into twelve districts,
with different but fixed close-times, and giving fourteen
extra days for rod-fishing. Three years later, Mr. Wal-
lace of Kelly had a Bill stopping net-fishing on the 24th
of August, and Joseph Hume produced one for giving
three weeks' angling after the stoppage of the nets. In
1842, Mr. EUice, member for the St. Andrews burghs,
proposed that the regulation of the salmon-fisheries in
Scotland should be handed over " with powers" to the
Board of Fisheries. In 1851, the Duke of Argyle brought
in a bill making the close-time commence earlier, and
giving some weeks of grace to the rod-fishers. All these
measures, besides several others, were either thrown out

SALMON LEGISLATION. 14*7

by one or other of the Houses of Parliament, or witli-
flrawn by their promoters in weariness and despair.

It was in 1857, and more decidedly in 1859, that
the tide of battle in the Legislature was turned. That
change was brought about not least by the fallacy and
failure of the then existing system having become too
apparent and too severely felt to be longer doubted or
denied. But if the time liad come, the man had come
too. That man was the Duke of Roxburghe, who was
strongest and foremost, especially as to finding the
sinews of war, in leading a series of successful assaults
upon the old and decaying system, in the cause, not
truly speaking of upper proprietors against lower, but
of preservation and increase against waste and decay.
Without seeking eclat, or claiming merit, or even getting
much assistance, the Duke gave to this good work years
of troul^le and thousands of pounds ; to him the owners
of salmon-fisheries, low and high, owe more than they
know of, and certainly very much more than they have
acknowledged; and if anglers are ever joyful and some-
times grateful, his is the name that will for ever

"Be in their flowing cnjis freshly remembered."

The melancholy fact that war between upper and
lower seems to be the natural state of salmon pro-
prietors, though their interests are ultimately and sub-
stantially identical, may require a few further words of
exposition, previous to describing the more recent legis-
lation, especially for Scotland and the Tweed. The
chief points to be noted are — 1st, That the parts of a

148 THE SALMON.

river at which sahiion are caugiit in the greatest quan-
tities, and in the most marketable condition, are quite
different, and generally speaking far removed from those
in which salmon are born, and for the most part reared ;
indeed, all but a fraction of the whole numlier of salmon
killed are killed in those districts where they are mere
passengers, and which are neither their birthplace nor
their residence ; 2c?, That partly from the seventy of
the fishing at the foot of the rivers, but partly also from
the fact that the fish do not much aspire to the higher
reaches of the rivers till late in the year, comparatively
few fish reached the upper proprietors (and the farther
up the worse) until the season when it was illegal to
kill them ; and Zd, That there thus being no local in-
terest in preserving the fish where they breed and are
bred, they (in the Tweed especially) were slaughtered
in inconceivable numbers during the seasons when they
should be spared, in spite of the costly and strenuous
efforts of the lower proprietors to provide a hired
guardianship —

" And many a cliildini; mother then,
And new-born infant died."

The cry of the upper proprietors was. Let more fish up
to us at times when it is legal to kill them, either by
extending the open season as to rod -fishing, or by re-
ducing the time or amount of net-fishing, or by both
methods — and in the end it will be ])etter for you as
well as for us. The reply of the lower proprietors was,
We are the rightful owners of the fish, because they are
passing over our ground at the season when nature
meant them for the food of man. And there the two

SALMON LE(4ISLATI()X. 149

parties stood upon their rights or thoii- wrmios. the fisli
meanwhile hastening to extinction.

It may freely be admitted that the lower proprietors
were correct in their statement, that salmon taken in or
near the sea are the best for food. Although honest —
but, as regards salmon, utterly ignorant — Izaak Walton
has stated, "It is observed that the farther they get
from the sea they be both the fatter and better," we
admit that his statement is just the reverse of the fact.
A fish in maidenhood is more wholesome than a fish
tending towards the family way. But then, for the pro-
pagation of the species, it is absolutely necessary that a
certain proportion should be allowed to get into the
latter condition. Doubtless, a wether, or an unmarried
ewe, makes the best mutton ; but if there were no rams
and no breeding ewes, there would soon be no mutton
at all ; and if, in haste to be rich, every farmer were to
kill every succeeding year all the sheep and lambs he
could lay hands on, without thinking how the stock was
to be kept up or reproduced, we should soon have in
sheep something like what has been going on in the case
of salmon. But there is no actual parallel in reckless-
ness and wastefulness. If landed proprietors used game
as fishery proprietors are apt to use salmon, " shooting
down the hens," and not letting one head escape which
by any means, fair or foul, they could possibly destroy,
nobody could doubt the sure and early result. And yet,
to make even this a parallel to the case of salmon, we
must suppose that, in addition to his own reckless
slaughter, a proprietor had no ground on which birds
would breed, and nevertheless so acted as to make

150 THE SALMON.

enemies of those on whose grounds they did breed, and
who had the eggs and the young at their mercy.

It was the more easy and obvious to suggest that
there was serious error in the argument of the lower
proprietors, owing to the existence of an error some-
where having been made but too apparent by the
dismal results of the system which they tried to defend.
Legislation aside, the fish belongs to whoever can catch
him. A man, say at Galashiels or Innerleithen, who,
during close-time, saw twenty salmon lying in a stream
of which he was owner or tenant, had, but for the Act of
Parliament, as much right to them then as his brethren
below had at an earlier time of the year. Nature sent
them there then as much as it sent them to Berwick
in August. And if it had been said that there is a
law of nature against killing fish so conditioned and
employed, he would have replied that but for the aU-
devouring activity of his brethren lower down, he might
have had fish in summer or autumn too ; and also that
the lower brethren did not consider themselves above
killing fish in much the same condition when they came
in their way. The law, therefore, which forbade him to
touch them, though a very w4se or necessary law, was,
he saw, a law to provide fish for the people at Berwick,
and not for him, and therefore he looked upon it as a
law which he had no interest in maintaining or ob-
serving. Those at whose mercy the fish lie during by
far the greater and more critical periods of their fresh-
water sojourn — their natural and only possible pro
tectors — were thus turned into their worst enemies.
They were, as Sir Walter Scott expressed it, made mere

SALMON LEGISLATION. 151

'■ cluckiiiu- liens for the lower heritors," and took an
absolute disgust at the process of incubation. Their
grounds were turned into mere lying-in hospitals and
nurseries ; they scarcely ever saw salmon but as infants,
as mothers in a delicate condition, and as invalids only
" as well as could be expected." They were to nurse them
when they were young, and to heal them when they were
sick ; and the people below were to kill and sell them
when they had attained health, size, and weight. The
upper proprietors were to take care of them for two
years without killing them, and the lower proprietors,
who could take no care of them, were to kill them before
they had been two days, or perhaps two minutes, within
their realms. Of course the result was, that the unpro-
fitable duties were not performed by those on whom
they naturally devolved, and no other class could act as
effective substitutes. The candle was thus being burned
at both ends — too many fish were killed at the bottom,
and too few were permitted to be born at the top.
How was this wasteful process to be stopped ? There
seemed nothing for it but a little abstinence and patience,
enforced Ijy Act of Parliament if need be — burning-
slower now, that there might be more to consume here-
after.

It was so far fortunate that the lower proprietors
(though they were long of seeing it, and in some cases
affected not to see it even at the last) had it in their
power greatly to placate, though not, strictly speaking,
to profit the upper proprietors, without loss, and even
with benefit to themselves. What the upper proprietors
chiefly wanted M'as not fish, l)ut fishing — not gain, Ijut

152 THE SALMON.

sport. The number of fish sufficient for sport, compared
with what is necessary for profit, is utterly insignificant;
and the upper or sporting proprietors were and are con-
tent to pay very high for what is of comparatively trifling
value to the lower or commercial interests. In illustra-
tion of this last statement, wc may mention that it has
been shown, from Tweed statistics, that, at least in some
years, the average cost of each salmon to the renters of
angling waters on that river is about £3 in rent alone,
while the average of rent paid by each fish captured in
the netting districts is only one shilling ; so that it may
be said that for every shilling's worth which the lower
proprietors allow to pass, they give the upper proprietors
£3 worth of interest in protecting the breed.

It should also be more popularly known than it is,
that for the most part it is fish in good or fair condition
that are taken l)y the rod and artificial fiy, even at the late
periods of the year. It is an entire mistake to think that
fish in the act of spawning can l>e killed by the rod as
they can be by the net and leister. A fish on its redd
will not take a lure, and lies in water where every angler
knows it would be hopeless to cast a line. The fish taken
by the rod in late seasons are taken in the same haunts,
and in much the same condition, as those killed by the
rod in the same reaches of the river during summer; that
is, waiting and resting, in streams and deeps, on their
way to the spawning-beds. So soon as they lie down to
spawn, the angler's chances end, and the poaclier's cer-
tainties begin.

This rule or law of nature extends far beyond fish
actually on the spawning-bed : just in proportion as a

SA L]\I ON T.KG IST.ATION. 1 5 ?■,

fish gets out of edible condition and into the spawning-
condition, the more disinclined and unlikely is he to rise
to a fly. This arises from two causes : the fish, carrying
developed roe or milt, get heavy in body and lethargic
in mind ; and as their condition implies some amount
of residence in fresh water and experience of the wiles
and cruelty of men, they have become afflicted with
excessive caution, amounting, in truth, to contemptible
cowardice. A river is often swarming for weeks with
brown or gravid fish, whilst the angler toils day after day
and catches nothing ; and every observant angler knows
that, if he sees ten brown fish and one white or silvery
one disporting themselves in a " cast," he has much more
chance of enticing the single new-comer than any one
of the ten old stagers. This fact is recognised in the
popular name given to the discoloured fish in many dis-
tricts both of Scotland and Ireland ; " old soldiers" they
are significantly called, partly on account of the redness
of their coats, but not less on account of their great skill
in foraging, and otherwise taking care of themselves.

Finally and chiefly, any additional number of fish
killed by the legitimate rod-fisher, during the extended
or extra portion of his season, does not anioimt to two or
three per cent, of the number that his and his watchers'
presence on the river saves from the poacher, who takes
the worst- conditioned fish by the most destructive in-
struments.

It was, then, in 1857 that the first successful attempt
at reform was made, and it w^as made in a, very mild
form, l)y a Rill promoted by the majority of the Tweed

154 THE SALMON.

Commissioners, l)ut the real promoter of wliicli was the
Duke of Eoxbiirghe. It dealt partly and gently with the
question of close-time, but its main object was the sup-
pression of certain fixed engines called stell-nets, and
also a less noxious species known as cairn-nets. For a
long period previous to 1830, the close-time on the Tweed
ran from the 10th October to the 10th of January; in
1830 its commencement was delayed till the 15th Octo-
ber, with a fortnight more for rods ; and in 1836 it was
continued till 15th February, with three weeks after the
autumn close, i. e., till 7th November, for rods. The Bill
of 1857 proposed that the fishing should not begin till
the 1st of March instead of the 15 th of Februar}^, the
close of the fishing season, or commencement of close-
time, to remain as it was both for nets and rods ; while
a section of the lower proprietors brought in an opposi-
tion Bill, mainly designed to keep things as they w^ere,
though also, hy way of threat, proposing to take au'ay
from the upper proprietors the three weeks of rod- fishing
they already possessed. At the close of the evidence
before the Commons' Committee, the lower proprietors,
either themselves con^dnced, or perceiving that the Com-
mittee was convinced, withdrew this proposal, and even
off'ered that rod-fishing should be legalized all the year
round, and also that the nets should come off* a week
earlier. But the mistake had been made ; the evidence
as to the insufticiency of the close-time, not required for
the purposes of the original Bill, but evoked by the pro-
posals in the opposition Bill, had shown the Committee
where the chief evil lay ; and, unasked and by a unani-
mous vote, they resolved that a month should be cut

SALMON LEGISLATION. 155

oft' from the end of the net-fishing season, and a fort-
night from the beginning, so making the season run from
1st March to 14th September, and allowing rod-fishing
till 14th October. In the Committee of the House of
Lords, the time allowed for net-fishing was extended to
the 1st October, being a fortnight longer than the period
fixed by the Commons' Committee, though a fortnight
shorter than the period by the then existing law which
the promoters of the original Bill had not proposed to
alter. By what ultimately proved a happy accident,
their Lordships, in making this alteration on the Bill as
it came from the Commons, omitted to make a corre-
sponding alteration in the clause regarding rod-fishing,
so that the result, as to the upper proprietors, of the Bill
as it passed was, that they got only a fortnight of rod-
fishing after withdrawal of the nets (from 1st to 14th
October) instead of the three weeks they had possessed
for twenty years before, the month which had been offered
them by the House of Commons, or the three months
which had been tossed to them, trop tard, by their tardily
converted or frightened opponents. Although the Bill
of 185 7 was not originally designed to make any altera-
tion on the seasons, that question might in a manner
have been considered settled had the Bill chanced to
become law as it passed the Commons ; as it was, the
question was, on the contrary, unsettled, and two years
afterwards was brought up again, and then settled, if not
in the best of all possible ways, at least in a way more
satisfactory than had been previously hoped for.

The Bill of 1859, promoted mainly by the Duke of
Roxburghe, had for its chief object the earlier closing of

!")(] 'J'HE SALMON.

the fishing season ; and, after a long and costly contest in
both Houses, the Tweed fishing season was fixed, for nets,
from 15 th February to 14tli September, and for rods,
from 1st February to 30th November. In explanation
of what may seem the extraordinary or even inordinate
extent of grace here given to rod-fishers, may be men-
tioned the natural character and circumstances of the
Tweed, and the virtual assent of what could scarcely, as
to this particular point, be called the opposition party.
The Tweed, even taking into account only the main river,
is, as to the ground over which salmon range, a very
long river, a hundred miles at least, and the salmon
not only distribute themselves over it with great slow-
ness as compared with most other rivers, so not arriv-
ing at its upper reaches till late in the season, but also,
for some reason not discoverable, obstinately disregard
the angler s invitation to a little dalliance by the way,
till they have ascended to distances from the sea
which, on almost all other rivers, are found to be above
the best angling districts. The difierence between
the Tweed and other rivers in this respect, has been
attempted to be explained by there being in other cases
an estuary, through which the fish have passed before
reaching the stream, whilst the Tweed tumbles at once
as a river into the German Ocean ; but this explanation
is not quite satisfactory, seeing that the habits of the
Tweed fish do not difier much more from those of the
fish of rivers like the Ness, which has an estuary, than
from those of the fish of some rivers like the Spey, which
have not. But though we cannot tell why it is, so it is,
and Parliament made allowance accordingly. Further,

SALMON LE(ilSLATIUN. 157

the lower pi-oprietorn, hoping to make powerful friends
without cost or even with profit to themselves, made no
serious opposition. And they have had their reward.
Poaching has immensely diminished, and the productive-
ness and value of the fisheries generally have greatly
increased. The Tweed was benefited, and an example
set wdiich other rivers have since adopted with improve-
ments and extensions.

The main object, however, of the Tweed Bill of 1857
was not to alter the close-time, Ijut to suppress an evil
local in its pecuhar form, but existing elsewhere in
other and worse forms ; and this object was proposed to
be accomplished on a principle equally applicable to all
similar cases. From time immemorial there had existed
in the lower or tidal portions of the river Tweed a
species . of engine called a stell-net, thus described in a
paper read to the Newcastle antiquaries by the late
Mr. Kobert Weddel of Berwick : — " The stell-net is rowed
into the river in a semicircular shape. A rope attached
to one end of it is held by the fisherman on shore, and to
the other extremity is attached an anchor, which is fas-
tened in the bed of the river. The fishermen in the boat
then go to near the centre of the net on the outside of it,
and take hold of it, and when they either feel fish strike
against the net, or see them approach within its reach,
they give notice to the men on shore, and while the
latter haul in their end of the net, the men in the boat
hoist the anchor, release the net, and bring it on shore.''
Obviously this engine largely partook of the nature of a
fixture or "bar," remaining stationary across the path of
the fish till a (iapture was made ; and, as in the case of

158 THE SALMON.

all engines of that class, its evils lay not only in wliat it
caught, but in what it stopped, doing even more indeed
in the way of obstruction than of destruction. Never-
theless, these engines had existed from time immemorial,
and it was a strong measure to propose their abolition by
means of a private Bill. It is true that the proposal was
accompanied by another, assented to only by a majority
of those concerned, and which, if the division into upper
and lower proprietors had been complete as to interests,
must have been reckoned as more than a quid pro quo.
The middle and upper proprietors themselves possessed
a species of fixed net, called a cairn-net. A cairn or
putt is, or rather was, a short pier run out two or three
yards into the river, and causing an eddy or " slack-
water," into which fish travelling upwards are apt to
enter and rest, especially during the nights when the
river is in travelling condition ; and a cairn-net is or
was a short net fastened to the outer end of this pro-
jection, and then allowed to swing down with the stream,
so forming a barrier parallel between the eddy and the
main current, and having a good chance of intercepting
all fish that turned to pass outward from theii' resting-
place. Of these nets there were several hundreds upon
the Tweed ; they were increasable to any extent ; and on
many of the upper waters they killed a great many more
fish than were taken with the rod. All this the middle
and upper proprietors, or the majority of them, offered
to give up ; in other words, to give up perhaps one-half
of the fish they then killed. This proposal, of course,
put two powerful arguments into the hands of the upper
proprietors ; that they were applying to their own fixed

SALMON LEGISLATION. 159

engines the same rules that they sought to apply to the
much smaller number of fixed engines belonging to the
lower proprietors, and that they showed their desire to
be not to kill fish by all legal and available means, but
only by one means, and that the least destructive of all.
Rather unwisely, the lower proprietors as a body made
common cause with those of their number who owned
stell-nets, and the battle was fought on the general
principle that these engines were sanctioned by imme-
morial usage, recognised as property by law, included in
family settlements, and therefore not subject to abolition
without compensation, either by a private Bill, or by any
kind of legislation. But the Legislature, merely on the
ground that these engines were proved to be injurious to
the general interest of the fisheries, and that they par-
took of the nature of fixtures, which are adverse to the
spirit of the salmon-fishery laws, entirely abolished them
without compensation. There was of course a consider-
able outcry, and the counsel for the stell-net owners
announced that " the decision would be ruinous to some
of his (dients, and absolutely fatal to some of the most
important fisheries." But, apart from the argument as to
justice, the result has quite refuted all such statements —
the rental, not only of the Tweed, but of those portions
where the stell-net existed, has very considerably in-
creased since the abolition of the engines which were
represented as constituting so large a portion of the
value. It remains to be added, however, that this Parlia-
mentary decision, taken with its sequels, or rather want
of sequels, supplies a very striking instance of the want
of consistency or fixed principles with which legislation,

160 THE SALMON.

on at least this part of the question, has of late years
been conducted. On the Tweed, those fixed engines had
whatever claim or protection is derived from imme-
morial usage, and were abolished by means of a private
Bill ; a public and Government Bill, designed to abolish
throughout Scotland fixed engines of quite modern date,
and quite without legal recognition, was not accepted by
Parliament ; and while the Tweed Bill of 1857 abolished
ancient fixtures, the Tweed Bill of 1859 was not allowed
to abolish in the same district certain other fisheries
(stake and bag nets), which were and arc much more
destructive than the stell-nets, and had not the pleas of
usage and legal recognitio]].

Another change efiected by the new Tweed Acts,
and subsequently imported into general Acts both for
England and Scotland, was the prohibition of the use
of the leister or spear. This was an old, and, especially
on the Tweed, a very popular sport ; but it was
butcherly and destructive, and by voluntarily surrender-
ing it, the upper proprietors gave another proof that
their object was not fish, but only fishing. Night-
leistering, with the glare of the pine-torches reflected
from clifi", and wood, and water, with the yells, the
laughter, and the immersions, was doubtless in some
respects a fine sight and a most exciting sport ; but it
was slaughterous and wasteful, killing more fish in a few
minutes than would have sufiiced for a season's sport,
and killing them, too, just when they were most useful
in the water and most useless out of it. It was no un-
common thing, on some of the upper fisheries of the
Tweed, to kill within an hour, on a February or Novem-

SALMON LEGISLATION. IGl

ber night, a greater number of fish than liad been killed
with the rod during the whole season (and the farther
up the river, the greater or more entire becomes this
truth), to say nothing of the far greater numbers killed
by poachers with the same weapon, both in and out of
the legal season. The antiquity of the practice, its
picturesqueness, and, at the same time, its odiousness to
eyes unaccustomed to its beauties and natures unhar-
dened to its butcherliness, are shown forth in these
cranky sentences, written 200 years ago by the Crom-
wellian Captain Francks : — " When the salmon goes to
the shallows, that is the time the prejudicate native con-
sults his opportunity to put in execution that barbarous
practice of murdering fish by moonshine, or at other
times to martyr them with the blaze of a wisp and a
barbed spear. What ! are these cannibals or murdering
moss-troopers to surprise fish by the engine of fire-light?
Such dark conspirators sprung from Fawkes or Catiline,
or some infernal incubus." The Rev. James Hall of
London, in his Travels in Scotland by an Unusual Route,
thus describes and comments upon the practice of salmon-
leistering, as witnessed by him about the beginning of
the present century, chiefly in Aberdeenshire, Banff", and
Moray : — " There is a shamefully destructive amusement
which the men are fond of, and which, though against
the law, too many of the proprietors in the upper parts
of the country do not discourage,^ — I mean the killing of
salmon in the rivers in winter, while they are spawning.
As by law the heritors near the mouths of rivers are en-
titled to do all they can to prevent fish going up the
rivers, so the proprietors on each side of the rivers, in

L

162 THE SALMON.

the upper parts of the country, though it is against the
law, seem to wink at their tenants for destroying as
many of them as they can, and preventing them from
going down the river again ; and thousands of salmon
are not only killed in the river Spey, in the Aven, and
other rivers that run into it, but also, I believe, in most
rivers in Scotland, particularly in the northern counties,
by Avhat they call blazing or torch-light, and wliich they
do in the following manner : — When it grows dark, at
or near a shallow part of the river, where, during Novem-
ber, December, and part of January, the fish are gener-
ally busy in making a bed for spawn, four or five people
meet, and having stripped the lower part of the body
naked, and having a strong barbed hook (trident), witli
a long handle, one carrying a large torch of lighted fir,
split from the roots of trees found in the moss, they
instantly rush into the water, where the fish are busy,
and while the fishes know not what to do, astonished at
the sudden light, many of them are killed with the long-
barbed hooks. In many places of the Spey, this is
generally repeated several times of an evening ; nay,
sometimes, now and then, from four or five, when it
grows dark, till daylight next morning ; as the fish that
have escaped never fail, after some time, to return to
their spawning again ; and, though there is not a doubt
that fish in this state are not only what is termed foul,
but also unwholesome, yet they are eaten, and often sold
at a high price, sometimes even a shilling a pound ; and
although to the delicate and luxurious it will appear a
strange amusement, on a cold winter evening, to wade
up to the neck in water and pieces of ire, yet certain it

SALMON LEGISLATION. 163

is, that those who once begin this amusement generally
grow fond of it, and that they seldom catch cold by
it, but generally sleep sound, and find it a cure for
the cold. It is true this is most frequently done by
young men, but it is also true that men of fifty, sixty,
and even seventy, sometimes practise it, and come for
miles in the coldest evenings, even in the midst of frost
and snow, not so much for the profit as the pleasure this
amusement afibrds."

The Tweed Bill of 1857, as introduced, proposed the
abolition of leistering only during night, but Parliament
extended the prohibition also to the day-time ; and the
Act of 1859 rendered illegal even the possession of such
a weapon within five miles of the river. It is also well
worthy of note that the practice had been abolished by
an Act of the Canadian Legislature, even in Labrador,
before it was abolished among ourselves— the reason, as
stated by Mr. Hind, being " the great waste of fish to
which it led."

In some minor, but still important respects, the
Tweed Bills also set examples and gave hints to the
framers of future and larger measures — such as by mak-
ing the weekly close-time begin six hours before and
last six hours after the twenty-four hours of Sunday ;
by prohibiting the killing of foul fish even during the
legal fishing season ; by restricting nets as to the size of
the meshes (one and three-quarters inch from knot to
knot) ; by fixing the closeness, both as to distance and
time, with which ordinary or wear-shot nets may be
worked ; by attempts towards modifying or removing
the obstructions caused by dykes or dams, etc. etc. By

164 THE SALMON.

what the Tweed Bills accomplished wholly or partially as
to the Tweed, and also by what they unsuccessfully pro-
posed, they gave the cue and the example to the other
fishery districts, not only of Scotland, but of England
and Ireland ; and it was afterwards found that the
evidence by which they were supported had not only
exposed the causes and suggested the remedies of the
prevailing evils, but had imbued the Legislature both
with knowledge and with grace.

The district that first followed, and then, in one or
two points, bettered the example of the Tweed, was the
Tay, the proprietors of which, with something veiy near
unanimity, asked and got in 1858 a local Act, virtually
taking the Tay fisheries out of Home Drummond's Act,
and cutting ofi' three weeks from the end of their season
(making close-time begin on 26th August instead of
15th September), at the same time giving the rod-fishers
to the 30th September, or five weeks' grace. For some
years previous to this Act, as we have formerly had
occasion to mention, a majority of the Tay proprietors
had acted voluntarily on the rule of closing on the 26 th
of August, with the efiect of raising their rental from
the low point to which it had sunk under Home Drum-
mond's Act ; but the new Bill had been rendered neces-
sary by a few of the proprietors having refused to concur
in the voluntary arrangement, and insisted on continuing
to work their fisheries after their neighbours had closed.
One eff"ect of the shortening of the season under the new
Act was a further increase of rental, which has now
reached a higher amount than ever before. And it may
as well be noted here as elsewhere, that not only have

SALMON LEGISLATION. 165

all those rivers which have shortened their season gained
in the amount of produce, but that the expense of work-
ing them has been largely decreased ; in other words,
more fish are cauo-ht within a shorter time and at a
smaller expense.

In 1860, a year after the passing of the second
Tweed Act, two private Bills were introduced, one for
the Ness and Beauly, the other for the river Thurso,
directed chiefly to sweeping away the fixed nets from
the mouths and neighbourhoods of those rivers, though
also closing the fishing season on the 26th of August,
and alio wing; some time thereafter for rod-fishino;. Here
the proposal was substantially, and the principle in-
volved identically, the same as in the Tweed Bill of
1857— the putting down of fixed engines by the in-
strumentality of private Bills ; the only differences in
point of fact between the cases being that in this case
the fixed engines were more numerous and destructive,
besides being of modern date and disputed legality.
After taking evidence, the Commons' Committee passed
both the Bills ; but when they reached the Lords, it
was successfully urged on the Government that the
whole sulDJect of fixtures should be dealt with by a
general measure, preceded by a general inquiry. A
Committee of the House of Lords was then appointed,
which, after hearing a great deal of evidence, made a
report, of which the chief recommendations were : That
all fixtures ought to be abolished, though adding that if
that were found impossible, they ought to be restricted
and regulated ; that there should be no fishing with nets
later than the 20th. of August ; and that the Govern-

166 THE SALMON.

ment ought to bring in a Bill applying these recom-
mendations to Scotland generally.

About the same time that this committee of the
House of Lords was sitting on the case of Scotland, a
Royal Commission was making its perambulations in an
inquiry into the case of England ; and that Commission
unanimously came to similar conclusions with the Lords'
Committee in regard to the suppression of fixed engines,
the lengthening of close-time, and all other matters of
importance.

Next year (1861), the Lord Advocate, in pursuance
of the recommendation of the Lords' Committee, brought
in a Bill for Scotland, aiming to carry into law all the
propositions of the Committee, with the necessary sup-
plements and adjuncts. All fixtures were to be sup-
pressed ; the annual close-time was to extend from 21st
August to 15th February, instead of from 15th of Sep-
tember to 31st of January ; the weekly close- time was
to be extended from twenty-four to thh-ty-eight hours ;
and various other alterations were proposed, all in the
right direction. This excellent measure, however, met a
sad fate by an unusual process. In an evil hour, and per-
haps because the sons of Zeruiah were too hard for him,
the Lord Advocate consented to refer his Bill to a Select
Committee of the House of Commons, the selection of
which proceeded on a principle quite different from, or
rather opposite to, that usually acted on in the appoint-
ment of tribunals of that or any other species. The
members were selected, not because they had any special
knowledge of the matter, but because one or more of
their constituents had special interests in the matter;

SALMON LEdlSLATION. 167

and the tribunal thus strangely selected opened its door
only once, to hear a single witness on one of the sides,
and then sat down in private to tear the Bill to bits in
such way as the strength of the different interests might
permit. Apart altogether from any question as to the
merits of the decision arrived at, this was surely a very
anomalous and even irrational mode of procedure. Why
should public money and the labours of commissions
and committees be expended in ascertaining and decid-
ing upon the facts of the question, if another tribunal, in
no way qualified by knowledge, and somewhat disquali-
fied by position, is afterwards to throw aside the facts,
and reverse the decision ? What is the use of Committee
A deciding according to evidence, if appeal lies to Com-
mittee B deciding without evidence? The result was
pretty much what was to have been expected — after
much stumbling and blundering, the Committee, being
unable to agree upon any other course, came to decisions
which amounted to leaving fixed engines pretty much
as they were. The little, indeed, that the Committee
did propose to do on this subject was virtually a great
concession, though nominally a restriction. One peculi-
arity in the case of these engines had always been, that
they were not sanctioned either specifically or in inten-
tion by any charter, nor ever mentioned in any Act of
Parliament, excepting to be prohibited. By the Bill, as
altered by the Commons' Committee, they would have
been mentioned in an Act of Parliament for the purpose
of being dealt with on precisely the same footing as the
ancient and anciently recognised engines ; and though
the fixed-net owners, or rather claimants, might have

168 THE SALMON.

temporarily lost a little by being subjected to the same
new restrictions regarding times and seasons as the
owners of the ordinary and ancient fisheries, they would
have gained a hundred times more in being for the first
time recognised as equal in rights to other fisheries by a
Legislature which had never before recognised them as
having any legal rights or existence at all. In a word,
by the metamorphosis attempted by the Commons' Com-
mittee, the Bill designed to suppress fixed nets in Scot-
land would have been turned into the first legislative
recognition or authorization of those devices. In these
circumstances the Lord Advocate wisely resolved to
withdraw the mangled and distorted remains. The chief
blame of this failure lies not upon the Lord Advocate,
who attempted excellently, but on the facts that he was
strongly opposed and weakly befriended — that the fixed-
net owners showed themselves united and energetic, and
the river owners divided, apathetic, and captious.

In 1862, the Lord Advocate tried again, and intro-
duced a Bill which, after undergoing various alterations
in its progress through Parliament, forms the existing
law for all Scotch fisheries north of the Tweed. This
Bill did a good deal in itself, and remitted a good
deal to be done by Commissioners acting under the
powers it gave them. It differed from its predecessors
chiefly in omitting the main point, which had also proved
the grand difficulty — it left the question of fixed engines
almost untouched, and having to include them in the
new restrictions imposed upon other engines, took care to
declare that no mode of fishing should by the Act be
made legal which was or miorht have been illeofal before ;

O O o

SALMON LEGISLATION. 169

in other words, left the question of fixed nets as open as
before, for litigation as well as for legislation. A con-
siderable power, however, was given to the Commis-
sioners, the exercise of which is likely to result in the
suppression of many of the most mischievous of these
engines, the Commissioners being authorized to fix the
natural boundaries between estuaries and seas ; that is,
the boundaries between the localities in which fixed
engines are undoubtedly illegal, and those in wliich their
legality is assumed by some and questioned by others.
There may be some doubt whether, as the chief use or
significance of the distinction between sea and river has
reference to fixed nets, this provision is not open to the
objection of, so to speak, renewing or sharpening a dis-
tinction which it is a most desirable object to obliterate.
Perhaps, however, in all the circumstances, the omis-
sion, as completely as possible, of the main question
as to fixed nets was the best course for the Lord Advo-
cate or the Government, as there were several other
important matters urgently requiring adjustment, and
the settlement of which could be effected without placing
any additional obstacle in the way of a future decision
upon the great question omitted. With these matters
the new law has dealt, on the whole, wisely and well, and
would have dealt still better and more wisely, had the
Bill come out of Parliament as it went in. The annual
close-time now extends to 168 days, and, if the Lord
Advocate and the House of Commons had had their way,
would have extended to 180 days. As the close-time
for Scotland generally, under Home Drummond's Act,
extended to only 139 days, there has thus been made an

170 THE SALMON.

addition of 29 days, or about a month, to the period of re-
pose or abstinence. This is a most valuable reform, and all
the more so that the dates or days, though not the dura-
tion, of the annual close-time, are allowed to be varied in
different localities by the Commissioners, who are " to
determine, subject to the provisions of this Act, at what
dates the annual close-time for every district shall com-
mence and terminate." This is a duty involving several
difficulties, greatly increased by what we take leave to
think the serious mistake of making the season the same
length in every district. The difierence between districts
is, for reasons previously stated, not so properly described
by the phrases ' late' and ' early' as by the phrases ' long-
seasoned ' and ' short-seasoned,' salmon beginning to get
out of condition about the same time in all rivers, but vary-
ing greatly as to the times in which they begin to ascend
different rivers in good condition. The variations, there-
fore, ought to be made at the commencement of the season ;
but of course, when the law absolutely fixes the length
of season, every variation as to the commencement would
have a corresponding, or rather counteracting, effect upon
the close. Power was also given to the Commissioners
to decide for what period in each district rod-fishing
shall be permitted after the withdrawal of the nets.

The new close- times have not yet been fixed in all
cases, owing partly to the owners of several rivers or dis-
tricts having neglected to form Boards, as required by
the Act, and partly to delays in procuring from the Home
Office the necessary confirmations. So far, however, as
the Commissioners have been enabled to proceed, they
have divided the rivers or districts into three different

SALMON LEGISLATION. 171

classes, as regards the periods for net-fishing : — 1st class
— open from 11th February to 26th August; 2d class —
from 16th February to 31st August; 3d class — from
25th February to 9 th September. In the first class there
have been or are likely to be placed by far the larger
number of rivers, including almost all the important
ones — Tay, Forth, Dee and Don, Spey, Findhorn, Kyle
of Sutherland, Ness, Beauly, etc. In the second class
there will probably be no other rivers than the two Esks
of Forfarshire, and the Add and Echaig, in Argyleshire.
The third class will include the small rivers in Gallo-
way and the south of Ayrshire, and also the Ythan and
Ugie, in Aberdeenshire. As to rod-fishing, the Commis-
sioners seem to proceed on the plan of allowing it to
continue up to the end of October, unless the proprietors
desire an earlier closing. At the end of the volume will
be found a table, giving more precisely the close-times
of the Scotch rivers north of Tweed, as fixed at May
1864.

The Act also extended the weekly close-time by twelve
additional hours, making it run from six on Saturday
night to six on Monday morning. Here, too, a discre-
tionary power, and one of a rather embarrassing charac-
ter, is given to the Commissioners : " The Commissioners
shall have power, on the application of the district board,
or of any two proprietors of fisheries in any district, to
vary the period at which the weekly close-time shall
commence in any district, or any part thereof, in so far
as they may think reasonable or expedient, provided that
such weekly close-time shall in no case be less than
thirty-six hours." Why have mentioned certain hours

172 THE SALMON.

if the Commissioners were left free to fix any other
hours ? In every district the Commissioners will doubt-
less have it represented to them that some fisheries would
be greatly benefited by the thirty-six hours being made
to begin at noon on Saturday and terminate at midnight
of Sunday, thus giving them the advantage of the dark
hours of Monday morning. But just as certainly they
will find that the arrangement which benefits those
fisheries will proportionally injure others in the same
district. On what principle are the Commissioners to
decide, and on what principle were they asked to decide
at all ? What the Commissioners have done so far is to
refuse, in the case of river or net-and-coble fishings, any
variation of the hours from six to six ; but in the case
of stake and fly nets (not of bag-nets, which can be
reached at all states of the tide), the weekly close-time,
if the proprietors so desire, has been made to run from
the hour of low-water nearest six on Saturday night to
the hour of low-water nearest six on Monday morning.

The Act also efiects several other beneficial changes.
It prohibits fishing with lights, but, obviously by acci-
dent, omits to prohibit the use of the leister also during
the day, as do the English and Tweed Acts. It prohibits
the sale and use of salmon roe, which had formed a large
portion of the remuneration of the poachers, and renders
illegal fishing by three or more persons at night a criminal
ofl*ence.

In short, the new Scotch law deals more or less
satisfactorily with all the parts of the question, except
the great evil and difficulty of fixed engines, and that
difficulty will now be the more easily dealt with when

SALMON LEGISLATION. l73

its consideration is (.liaembarrassed from its siuTouiidings,
and is left standing alone, all its ugly companions abo-
lished and gone. All parties interested, and the public
more than any party, are under no light debt to the Lord
Advocate for pulling through, amid so many difiiculties,
and the distracting clamour of conflicting interests, the
only general Salmon Fishery Act for Scotland which had
been passed for more than thirty years, though during
that period there had been pretty nearly thirty attempts.
For England, a very important Act was passed in
the same year (1861) that the first Bill for Scotland
was defeated, the better and earlier success of the
attempt for England being ascribable mainly to the fact
of the evils in that country having become greater and
more obvious. Indeed, matters in England had arrived
at such a stasje that leojislation had to be directed rather
to restoration than preservation. Accordingly, a large
portion of the English Act refers to the removal or
modification of the evils caused by pollutions and ob-
structions. The substance of the clauses as to pollution
is simply the prohibition of "putting into any waters
containing salmon any liquid or solid matter to such an
extent as to cause the waters to poison or kill fish," un-
less the ofliender can show that he has "used the best
practicable means within a reasonable cost to render
harmless the said liquid or solid matter." The pro-
visions as to the removal or lessening of obstructions,
and also as to the regulation of " fishing rivers," are too
numerous, various, and minute to be here stated. The
annual close-time is fixed to extend from the 1st Sep-
tember to the 1st February, being 153 days, or fifteen

174 THE SALMON.

days less than the Scotch close-time ; but the Quarter
Sessions and Home Office have power to " extend or
vary" the close-time, — an expression which seems of
very dubious interpretation. Two extra months — till
1st November —are given for rod-fishing. The weekly
close-time is from twelve at noon on Saturday to six
on Monday morning, being six hours more than given
by the new Scotch law. The minimum size of the
meshes of nets is fixed at two inches from knot to knot,
or eight inches round. . All fixed engines are pronounced
illegal, wherever placed, with the exception of " fishing
weirs and fishing mill-dams," and of " any ancient right
or mode of fishing as lawfully exercised at time of the
passing of this Act, by any person, in virtue of any
grant or charter, or immemorial usage." There has not
yet been time to see to what extent these provisions will
abet the evil of fixed engines ; but this much is certain,
an end is made in England of stake and bag nets, none
of which were sanctioned by grant nor by immemorial
usage. Not the least of the benefits of the English Act
of 1861, is that it gives comparative simplicity and
uniformity to the Salmon Laws of England, which for-
merly were in unworkable confusion. The new Act
repealed, so far as relates to salmon, no fewer than
thirty-three old Acts, of which twenty-six were general
and seven private. Though the present, therefore, is not
the best of all possible laws, it is one good law coming
in place of many bad or useless laws.

In Ireland, up till 1842, the fishery laws had been
for centuries the same as those of England, though
modified and somewhat confused by differences in the

SALMON LEGISLATION. 175

nature of property tenures. Excepting as to the ques-
tion of fixed engines, it is not necessary now and here
to refer to anything beyond the main provisions of the
existing law, which passed in 1862. The annual close-
time, which had previously been 124 days, with varying
dates, is now 168 days, as in Scotland, with dates vary-
ing in different districts at the will of the Commissioners,
and angling is permitted for the whole period from 1st
February to 1st November. The weekly close-time
extends from six on Saturday morning to six on Mon-
day morning, being twelve hours more than the Scotch
weekly close-time, and six hours more than the English.
In minor matters the provisions of the existing Irish
law do not differ materially from the English and Scotch
laws. Regarding fixed engines, both the history and the
present state of the Irish laws are too complicated to
admit of more than an imperfect description. In Ireland,
as everywhere else, stake and bag nets were innovations
upon the old methods, introduced at comparatively re-
cent dates ; and, though there were judicial decisions
holding them illegal both at statute and common law,
the practical questions as to their removal were greatly
encumbered by the varieties and dubieties of the tenures
on which fisheries were held. In 1842, an Act was got
through Parliament, partaking, at least in appearance, of
the nature of a compromise, sanctioning a few of the
existing fixtures, and these only. It is or was com-
plained, however, that, besides in these few cases making
legal what had been illegal, this Act, by an indirect
process, gave a quasi legality to almost all the fixtures,
the imperfections of the law being greatly aggravated by

176 THE SALMON.

the neglect and malversation of the Magistracy. That
the operation of the Act of 1842, on this point, was evil,
may be inferred from the fact, that, after great grumbling
and contention, its provisions as to fixtures were to
a great extent repealed by the Act of 1862. By that
Act, bag-nets are prohibited within any river, as defined
by the Commissioners, or within three miles of the
mouth of any river, as so defined, with the exception of
cases in which the right of salmon fishing in the whole
of a river and its tributaries and lakes belongs to one
proprietor. No neiv fixed nets can be erected anywhere.
The Commissioners can order the removal of all fixed
nets that are in their opinion injurious to navigation, or
otherwise illegal. No cruive or trap can be used within
fifty yards of a mill-dam, unless the dam has a fish-pass
approved of by the Commissioners ; and nothing in the
Act is to render legal any fixed net or fishing weir in
contravention of any previous Act of Parliament, or of
the common law in force in Ireland. Though the prin-
ciple of the Irish Act, therefore, is not the suppression of
all fixtures as necessarily and in their nature evils and
encroachments, it deals with them as things which the
law must jealously watch and tightly restrict ; and it
would appear that the Act is interpreted and worked by
the Commissioners in such a way that, as to Ireland, the
mischief may be regarded as not only stayed, but reduced
to comparative unimportance.

In 1863, a very useful little Bill was brought in by
Government, and passed without resistance, " prohibiting
the exportation of salmon at certain times." The evil
which this measure was designed to cure, and in the

SALMON LEGISLATION. 177

r-ure of which it lias already made considerable progress,
was exhibited by returns to Parliament, showing the
declared value of the salmon exported in each of the
months of the years 1861 and 1862. The year may, as to
salmon, be divided into two equal parts, one during which
the fisheries are legally in operation, and the fish in good
edible condition, and the other during which fishing and
sale are illegal, the fish unwholesome, and their capture
destructive of the breed. It appears from the returns,
that, measured by value, just about as much salmon was
wont to be exported during the illegal as during the
legal season ; and as the value of foul fish as compared
with clean is seldom more than one-fifth, it would ap-
pear that by far the greater part of the salmon exported
consisted of fish taken in the breeding season, and in
the most unwholesome condition, besides having been
stolen from the fishery-owners, and in violation of laws
designed to preserve from extinction a valuable article of
food. In 1862, the value of the salmon exported was
£41,657, and of that value almost precisely a half was
exported during those months when there was no legal
fishing, and each of four of the close months showed a
much larger export than each of four of the other months.
In. fact, as soon as the period of the year arrived at which
fishing becomes legal, the export of salmon dwindled to
a trifle, — several thousand pounds' worth being sent
abroad in the last month of the close-time, and only a
few hundreds in the first months of the open season.
The evidence was complete, that the export trade in
salmon was in the main a trade in stolen and unwhole-
some commodities. The mode of cure was obvious.

M

178 THE SALMON.

The sale of salmon was prohibited during the months in
which the fisheries are legally closed ; prohibit the ex-
port also. To preserve the fisheries, we had made laws
against selling stolen and unwholesome fish among our-
selves ; to allow the sale of the same commodity to our
neighbours, was not only an inconsistency, but was an
injustice both to our neighbours and ourselves. The
e^dl, too, w^as increasing, the export of 1862 having been
nearly double that of 1861. On the recommendation of
the Customs department, the Government introduced a
Bill, now law, prohibiting the export of unclean or un-
wholesome salmon at all times, and of "any salmon
caught during the time at which the sale of salmon is
prohibited in the district where it has been caught ;" the
burden of proving that the salmon entered for exporta-
tion are not so entered in contravention of the Act
being laid upon the exporter. The eff'ect of this Act, in
co-operation with the clause in the other Acts prohibit-
ing the sale and use of salmon roe, has been very bene-
ficial ; and, although a considerable quantity of foul
salmon is still smuggled to the Paris market under false
entries, the Customs will doubtless fall upon some method
of stopping that evil and punishing the evil-doers.

From this necessarily brief, rough, and imperfect
sketch, it will be seen that, as to one of the two chief
questions regarding salmon -fisheries — i.e., the length
of the season — the recent legislation for all the three
countries has tended in the same direction, and has
gone, in all the cases, pretty nearly the same length.
The annual close-time and the weekly close-time have
both been lengthened as to the commercial modes of

SALMON LEGISLATION. 170

fishing, and there has been an extension of privilege, or
rather of right, to those upper proprietors whose wishes
are satisfied by obtaining only a very small proportion
of the fish all of which are born and bred within
their realms. But the other great question — whether
certain modes of fishing, prohibited to the more ancient
and important fisheries, are justly or even legally per-
mitted to the newer fisheries — though it has been brought
pretty near to a satisfactory settlement in England and
Ireland, has in Scotland been left over for separate con-
sideration and handling. The removal of fixed engines
is not the only thing left to be done for the Scotch fish-
eries, but it forms the most important and urgent part
of the remaining work ; and therefore it is necessary to
inquire more particularly what these engines are, and
why they are, whence they came and where they are
.going to, what they have done and what ought to be
done to them.

1 Sn THE SALMON.

CHAPTER V.

FUTURE SALMON LEGISLATION.

Scotch Fixed Nets — Pollution of TJivers.

" Clear your mind of cant," is an injunction much
needed to be addressed to the pubHc and the Legislature
regarding the question of fixture-fisheries on the coasts of
Scotland. The public mind, which of course the legis-
lative mind reflects, has become infected with the idea
that these engines are a "property" which it would be
robbery to take away ; but the fact, easy of demonstra-
tion, is, that the so-called property is in truth stolen
goods, or rather the means of stealing goods that had for
centuries been the lawful -property of others. If that
portion of the value of any fishery which is derived from
the use of those engines can in any sense be called
property, it is a pi'operty unjustly or violently carved
out of other property — a new property sliced off from
an old property by instruments which the old property
is not allowed to use for its benefit or defence.

In Scotland all property in salmon-fisheries is consti-
tuted by or derived from Crown grants. Now the sum
of the whole matter as to fixed nets is condensed in this
little fact— that the Crown never made a grant of salmon-
fisheries with the intention or under the slightest sus-

FUTURE SALMON LEGISLATION. 181

picion that tlie fishing was to be performed by fixed nets.
All the charters for sea-coast fisheries were granted, and
all those fisheries were worked, long before those engines
were resorted to or thouoht of. It is therefore not an
inference, but a simple matter of fact, that, if the owners
of sea-coast fisheries were now compelled to recur to the
machinery which they used at first, and which is the
only kind permitted to their neighbours still, they would
have left to them all that it was ever intended they
should have, and all that they ever had, till, within these
few years, they, at their own hand, seized what had from
ancient times belonged to others.

The question is not whether the sea-shore proprie-
tors holding fishing charters shall retain their right of
salmon-fishing, but whether they, and they alone, shall be
allowed to fish by any and every means they can devise ;
more especially, whether they are to be allowed to use
a species of engines not contemplated when they acquired
their right of fishing, not used by them till a very recent
period, and strictly prohibited to all their neighbours.
It is not a question of taking away any "right," but of
applying the same regulation to the same right at one
spot as is applied to it at another round the corner. It
is not a question of taking away any portion of any kind
of " property," but of bringing all portions of the same
kind of property under the same law.

The assertion that these nets are " legal," is question-
able as fact, and worthless as argument. Their legality
is not judicially decided ; if they are legal, it is l)y over-
sight, or rather want of foresight ; and though they were
entirely and unquestionably legal, they would still be in

182 THE SALMON.

no stronger position as to legality, and in a much weaker
one as to consuetudinary use, than many of the modes
of fishing wliich the fishery laws have suppressed from
time to time throughout several centuries.

The judicial decision on the point of legality went
only this length — that the river or upper proprietors had
not a sufficient title to sue, that title being only in the
Crown as grantor. No action at law has been raised
by the Crown, and consequently it has not been really
decided whether the law would support these engines
against a plea by the grantor, that the grant had been
abused or exceeded. It is almost necessary, however, to
presume, from the fact of the Crown never having raised
such an action, that its law-advisers have been of opinion
that the law as it stands is not sufficient to reach these
engines. But, assuming that, how is it that the law
happens so to stand ? Simply by accidental omission,
or rather by the evil not having been in existence or
contemj)lation when the laws were made ; in short, from
the laws being old and the engines new. From the
earhest period, as already mentioned, legislation was
directed to prevent the erection of any standing obstruc-
tion, or even of any object the sight of which might
deter, in or across " the run of the fish." Until quite
lately, it was not known that the fish had a " run" along
the sea-coast, almost as definite, and, generally speaking,
no broader, than their run within the estuaries and larger
rivers ; consequently the words as to fixtures used in
the Acts had reference only to rivers and estuaries — that
is, to the only places where fixtures had existed or were
thought possible. And even after it was discovered that

FUTURE SALMON LEGISLATION. 183

salmon could be caught in the sea, and not merely in
the rivers and estuaries, and when fisheries on the shores
of the sea began to be asked for and granted (which was
about two centuries and a half ago, the earliest charter
for a sea-shore salmon-fishery which has been obtained,
being of date 1603), no question arose about fixtures on
the sea-shore, because the fixed engines then known were
not applicable to those localities, and it Avas not till two
hundred years afterwards, or till our own days, that any
engines were devised capable of standing and operating
on the open coast. If therefore these engines are legal,
it is only because they are not named nor specially struck
at in any Act passed before they existed ; and it is only
through accidental omission that the Statute-law did not
long ago deal with them in terms of express prohibition.
But does the past history of salmon legislation, any
more than do the dictates of common sense, sanction
the principle that whatever is must always be ? On
the contrary, that history shows that, especially in re-
gard to fixtures, legislation suppressed from time to
time whatever devices were deemed unfair or injuri-
ous, without regard to the sanction they had received
either from law or antiquity. Up to the middle of the
fifteenth century, it would appear that fixed engines, of
which the only species then known were cruives and
yairs, were legal everywhere. They were then sup-
pressed in estuaries and " within flude-marke of the sea"
— a cruive working in the full run of the fresh river
under certain regulations being regarded as less mischiev-
ous. These prohibitions were imposed at first only for a
specified term of years, but afterwards in perpetuity,

184 THE .SALMON.

and tlie Acts expressly iiicluded in their proliibitions
even those engines for which the Crown had granted
special permission ; that is, permission not only to fish,
but to fish by that particular mode. Thus in an Act of
James l. (1424), it is " ordanyt that all crufis and yaris
set in fresche watteris, quhar the see fillis and ebbis, the
quhilke destroyis the fry of all fisches, be destroyit and
put away for thre zeris to cum, notgaynstandand [not-
withstanding] ony privileges or fredom geifyn in the
contrare." In the same reign, another Act (1477 or 1478)
runs thus : — " It is statute and ordained that the acta
maid of before be King James the First anent the cruves
sett in waters be observed and keiped, the quhilk beiris
in effect that all cruves set in waters quhair the sea fillis
and ebbis, the quilk destroyis the fry of all fisches, be
put away and destroyed for ever mair, notwithstanding
all freedome or priviledge given in the contrail'." Ten
years afterwards, it is " statut and ordand that all cruffis
and fisch-dammys that ar within salt waterys quhar the
sey ebbis and flowis be alutly destroyit and put done,
alswele thai belongis to our Soveraine Lord as utheris
through aU the realme." And in another Act, referring
both to cruives in the localities above specified, and to
cruives in positions up the rivers, where they were legal,
but in the working of which the requirements of the law
had not been obeyed, " all schireffes, baillies, and stew-
ards" are ordered " to destroy, cast-doune, and put away
all the said cruives within their bounds incontinent with-
out ony delay." Here Ave see that modes of fishing which
had been prosecuted from time immemorial, and prose-
cuted under Crown rights for the exercise of those modes.

FUTURE SALMON LEGISLATION. 185

were suppressed by statute, the suppression including
the fisheries not only of private persons, but also the
fisheries retained and worked by the Crown itself. Those
Acts were dealing with the only kind of fixtures then
known, and they made no scruple of suppressing them in
all positions where they were considered hurtful to the
lireed of fish and " the commoun weill." Yet at the
present day we are told that it would be monstrous to
legislate to the same effect regarding modes introduced,
so to speak, only yesterday, and which are exercised, not
only without special rights conferred by the Crown, but
under rights conferred with a view to the use of quite
different modes. The salmon-fisheries of Scotland may,
as to the present question, be looked at as consisting of
two divisions : in one division wc have the great majo-
rity of the fisheries in number and value, situated in
rivei's and estuaries, and Avhich have existed from time
immemorial ; and in the other division we have a very
much smaller number and value of fisheries, situated on
the sea-shores, which came into existence centuries later
than the others, and acquired any considerable value only
within the present generation. The former were, five
hundred years ago, subjected to certain restrictions, which
it is said it would be robbery to apply to the latter even
now.

Of course, when the question is one of legislation,
and not of litigation, to talk of, " prescription," as many
do, is no better than nonsense. The modes of fishing
suppressed by the old Statutes just cited, and various
other practices suppressed by various other Statutes, had
incomparably longer prescription than the engines now

186 THE SALMON.

in question. " Forty years," is the present cry of the
owners of sea-shore fixtures ; but the owners of river and
estuary fisheries, when it was long ago and often pro-
posed to do to them what it is now proposed to do to
the coast-fishers, miglit have cried " Ten times forty
years," and could have pointed to charters and laws ex-
pressly giving them what the law afterwards took away
from them ; while the owners of sea-shore fisheries can-
not show any charter in which their engines are autho-
rized or mentioned, or any law in which they are men-
tioned, except to be prohibited. Even as matter of fact,
the statement that these nets have existed on the sea-
shore for more than forty years is not true, except to a
very limited extent ; it is only two or three of the
earliest of them that can boast that degree of antiquity.
It may be desirable to explain, in passing, that in
denying to stake and bag nets the antiquity even of forty
years, we are putting out of view the district of the
Solway. For that exclusion there are several good rea-
sons— such as, that the Solway was never under the
general Scotch law, but had nominally a law, and practi-
cally a lawlessness of its own ; and that the Solway is
an estuary, whereas we have been speaking of the period
of the erection of fixed engines upon the shore of the
sea. The Solway, in fact, was not only not under the
protection of either Scotch or English law, but was spe-
cially and designedly left unprotected. The reason for
this, on the Scotch side, was candidly stated in an Act
passed at the time of the union of the Crowns : " Ijecause
the rivers at that tyme devyded at many points the
bounds of England and Scotland, whereby the forl:)ear-

FUTURE SALMON LEGISLATION. 187

ance upon the Scots part from the shiiighter of salmon
in forbidden tyme, and of kipper, smolts, and black fishe
at all times, would not have made salmond ony mair to
abound in these waters gif the lyke order had not bene
observed upon the English side." Hence it was that
fixed engines, other than cruives and yairs, were of earlier
date on the Solway than elsewhere ; and hence, too, those
allusions in Scott's Redgaimtlet to the existence of fixed
nets in that region about 1750, which have given rise to
great misconceptions regarding the date of the engines
which are now ordinarily understood when we speak of
fixed nets. It was not till 1788, or nearly forty years
after the period of which Scott wrote, that anything like
the present stake-net was devised, even with the design
of operating in the shallow and sheltered waters of the
Solway estuary. The nets that had existed in the Solway
previous to that date, though of the nature of fixtures,
were not similar to nor fitted to do the work of the
sea-shore engines which, within these few years, have so
greatly injured the general interests of the salmon
fisheries, nor indeed were they fitted for any other tidal
waters than those of the Solway Firth, which have great
peculiarities, such as wideness, shallowness, and disco-
loration. The ancient Solway nets were of three kinds.
One kind, called " the half-net," was similar to the an-
cient stell-net of the Tweed, previously described, the
chief difierence being that the outer end of the net
was held, not by an anchor, but by a man, who stood
as deep and as long as he could in the advancing
tide, and brought his end of the net ashore as soon
as a fish struck. A second kind, called " the poke-

188 THE SALMON.

net," was set slack between two poles in some of those
parts of tlie sands across wliicli fish were likely to take
their course, and so captured the fish by entanglement.
The third species, called " the raise-net," was also fixed
between poles or stakes, but rose from the bottom with
the rising tide, so letting the fish pass upwards into the
" lakes" or flats at the lower part of which these engines
were erected, and then fell with the ebbing tide, so en-
closing the fish, and capturing such of them as sought to
return downwards. It was apparently this last kind of
net to which Scott, in Redgauntlet, makes the Quaker
Geddes allude : " Nets which work by the ebb and flow
of the tide." It will be seen that all these three kinds of
nets were fitted only for the peculiar circumstances of
the Solway, where there are ffir-stretching flats, a strong
tide, and a loose sand, which, raised by the rush of the
tide, discolours the water, so as to prevent the fish seeing
the obstruction. They differed entirely from what we
now call the stake-net, which puts across the path of the
lish an impassable wall, terminating in a labyrinth or
trap, where entrance is easy, and exit impossiljle. The
great difference indeed between these old Solway fixtures
and the new species is sufficiently proved by what hap-
pened when what may be called the real stake-net was
introduced into those regions. It was introduced at a
fishery near Annan in 1788 ; and, as we have already had
occasion to mention, in a few years it had almost eaten
up all its neighbours, and soon after was eaten up itself.
The same device was then resorted to in the Firth of
Tay ; but that district being under the Scotch law,
and being judicially declared an estuary, the attempt

FUTURE SALMON LEGISLATION. 189

was suppressed. It was only after all this that the kinds
of nets now under question were set up at the places
where they now abound. The year 1821 was the date
w^hen the first stake-net was erected on the shore of the
sea. The place was Dunninald in Forfarshire ; the rent
— so entirely novel was the experiment — was at first
every fifth fish, but at the end of three years was made
£400 in money ; and the man who did the deed is still
alive, and (strange to say) happy.

But, though the facts as to the real age of the engines
now in dispute were otherwise, it would be monstrous to
infer that what has existed for forty years has thereby
acquired a right to exist throughout all ages, especially
when it is plain as day that the" whole scope and prin-
ciple of the fishery laws, extending over centuries, has
been to restrain or suppress whatever was found to be
inequitable or injurious, without regard to the date or
circumstances of its introduction. " Prescription," there-
fore, must go out of the controversy as an impostor
and interloper.

Neither is it of any avail to say that those sea-shore
fisheries cannot be fished by any mode but the newly-
devised one ; because, in the first place, it is not and
cannot be true ; and in the second place, because if it
were true, it would be nothing to the purpose, seeing
that the same plea might be raised for large stretches of
river as well as of shore, and that it is just saying that
the sea-shore fisheries have not any value but that which
consists of value taken from their neighbours, by means
which their neighbours are denied. All the charters were
granted, and all the fisheries fished, long before the modes

190 THE SALMON.

of fishing now in question were used or invented ; so
that the property was not granted or acquired with any
view to its present uses, and it must have been found
capable of those other uses to which it is now proposed
to revert. The oldest coast charter is dated 1603,
the latest 1819 ; only four such charters have been
granted within the present century ; and the latest was
not, any more than the earliest, granted under any idea
that fixed nets would be used. Also it is worth men-
tion in passing, that the coast fishery which got its
charter last before the time when fixed nets were intro-
duced, has now been fished out of existence by the com-
petition of more favourably situated neighbours.

The very fact of a sea-shore salmon-fishery having a
charter is evidence that that fishery can be, and that it has
been, fished by the ordinary process of net and coble, or
by processes other than fixed nets. If that fishery had not
been so fishable, it would not have been a fishery at all,
till within these few years, and therefore would not have
been granted, purchased, or fished, as those fisheries were,
for generations preceding. In a " Statement for the Pro-
prietors in Scotland who hold Crown grants of Salmon
Fisheries in the Sea," laid before Parliament in 1861, it
was said : — " It is impossible to fish with profit in the
sea in Scotland except with fixed nets ; " and again :
"The suppression of every kind of fixed nets is a prac-
tical destruction and confiscation of the rights of those
who possess Crown grants of salmon-fishing in the sea ;
and sea-coast proprietors would be deprived by the Bill
of every available mode of fishing." Every man who said
this, or had it said on his behalf, had acquired his rights

FUTURE SALMON LEGISLATION. 1 9 I

long before, and without reference to, the introduction
of those engines which it was proposed to suppress ; had
found other means of fishing available ; and would have
had nothing confiscated that it was ever intended he
should possess, or that his ancestors ever had possessed.
But suppose there were or could be portions of the char-
tered shore-fisheries not capable of being fished otherwise
than by fixed engines, it is equally true that there are
great portions of rivers and estuaries in precisely the
same position. Take the Tay for instance. Under a
well-known decision of the Courts of Law, defining the
boundaries of the " estuary," within which the old Acts
were applicable, several estates lost rentals of thousands
a year by fixed engines being prohibited, and no other
being effective at these spots. It is ridiculously untrue
that of fisheries in rivers which but for the law would be
fished with fixed engines, all are or can be fished other-
wise. On every river and estuary there are whole tracts
now valueless as fisheries that would become great pro-
perties but for that principle on which all existing laws
are based, and yet which is now denounced as a novelty
and confiscation. If to subject this new and hitherto
favoured class of salmon-fishers to the same restrictions
as their neighbours, would render their fisheries almost
valueless, that is just saying that their property is
naturally and proj)erly of very little value, and is no
evidence at all that they are entitled to make it valuable
at the cost of their neighbours, and by means in the use
of which their neighbours are not allowed to compete.
It is surely a fair presumption that the Crown did not
contemplate giving a man a fishery at one point, im-

192 THE SALMON.

posing very severe restrictions upon him, and then that
another man round the corner, where perhaps there is
not very mucli difference naturally, though one is called
the estuary and the other the sea-shore, should be allowed
to put up engines which the other was prevented from
using, to the injury and almost to the anniliilation, as
it has proved, of the older grants. The gift was accepted
and for centuries used under this presumption or fact,
and if the recipients lost anything by being put on the
same footing with their neighbours, it would not be a
property they had got from the Crown, l)ut one they had
taken in spite of the intention of the Crown and the
spirit of the law.

The public or parliamentary mind has not sufficiently
in view that all that value which the fixed-net fisheries
have had added to their original value by the use
of these engines has been so much and more subtracted
from the value of other and older fisheries. The fixed
net fisheries, we are told, axe properties that have been
bought and sold, produce large rents, and involve the
interests of widows and children. But when and out of
what have these properties been created ? And are
there no " widows and children" but those of the owners
of bag-nets ? Those properties — i.e., so much of them as
is dependent on the use of fixed engines — have been
created within comparatively a few years, and at the
cost of other and older proprietors. All has been sub-
tracted from the river proprietors to whom is denied the
use of the very modes that have impoverished them.
There are or were some valuable fixed-net fisheries
created within twenty years on the coasts of Ayrshire ;

FUTUllE SALMON LEGlSLATiOX. 193

but they were carved out of the river-fisheries, which
were " confiscated" to the extent of about three-fourtlis.
Fixed-net fisheries to the value of several thousands a
year liave been created on the coast of Aberdeenshire ;
but w^iilst that process has been going on upon the coasts,
the annual value of the produce in the two Aberdeen-
shire rivers has been reduced by nearly £18,000 a year!
Of the fisheries on the Con on, nine-tenths were trans-
ferred in two or three years to a stake-net erected in
the Cromarty Firth. About three-fourths of the value
of the ancient fisheries on the Ness and Beauly, includ-
ing about nine-tenths of the value of the fisheries be-
longing to the Corporation of Inverness, were transferred
in the course of a few years to the proprietors of the
sea-coast down the firth, using engines which the law
prohibited to the proprietors farther up, and had been
designed to prohibit everywhere. In the Solway, as we
have seen, one stake-net, the first of its kind, almost en-
tirely swallowed up the neighbouring fisheries, swelled
itself up to more than a hundred times its former and
natural size — and then burst, the whole value of the
coast fisheries in that district, now fished by stake and
bag nets, being at present about a tenth of what it was
when salmon were cheap, and these inventions not found
out. In the view of such facts it is scarcely prudent to
talk of confiscation and transference.

Besides what they take fromi the older and rightful
properties, those engines take a great deal from the
public, and do not proportionally benefit those who
claim them as property. It is their nature to operate
in deterring and obstructing as well as in capturing, and

N

194 THE SALMON.

tliey so operate in a more injurious way than the simihir
causes operating in rivers. When salmon are stopped or
frightened back within a river, it is, generally speaking,
only a matter of delay and return ; but in the sea, the
fish stopped by the standing nets, if they escape capture,
are driven out among their natural enemies the seals and
porpoises, who systematically wait outside for the chance.
Again, though affording less employment than the ordi-
nary nets, fixed nets are very costly to work, owing to
the great tear and wear of materials caused by the action
of the sea. Taking the average of known cases, it re-
quires at least three fish to be taken in these engines for
one taken l^y the ordinary methods, in order to produce
the same amount of rental or profit. One highly expe-
rienced lessee of salmon-fisheries stated before the Lords'
Committee that one small fixed-net fishery in his neigh-
bourhood, in order to the payment of a £12 rent,
required to kill a greater number of fish than he, fishing
within the river, required in order to the payment of a
£650 rent. Partly in further explanation of such results,
and partly as exhibiting another evil, it may be men-
tioned that those nets, standing on the open coast, can
seldom fish during those earlier months of the year when
fish are in the highest condition and greatest demand.

In what has been said here, the reference has been
almost entirely to fixed nets on the sea-shore or any-
where else, not to cruives on the rivers. Legally and
morally, cruives differ from stake and bag nets chiefly
in this, that the right to fish by cruives was spe-
cially granted by charter, and has always been recog-
nised by law. Practically, there is also this difference,

FUTURE SALMON LEGISLATION. 19 5

that, cruives, besides being few, cannot be increased
either in number or efficiency, as no new charter author-
izing them where they do not now exist could be ob-
tained, and as the law tightly regulates their mode of
working ; while fixed nets are capable of great extension,
both as to number and as to length or reach. For in-
stance, a plan has lately been adopted by which, after a
stake-net has been carried out as far seaward as the
depth of the water or the nature of the ground will
permit, bag-nets (that is, nets of the same kind as
the others, Ijut fixed Ijy anchors instead of stakes) are
placed at the outer end in continuation, the whole some-
times being a mile in length, and not only forming a
barrier across more than the whole of " the run of the
fish," but also capturing many of that proportion of the
fish which, after striking the leader in-shore, do not go
into the trap of the stake-net, and would, but for the
bag -net beyond, escape for the time. Indeed, engines of
this kind being as yet but in their infancy in more senses
than one, it is impossible to foresee to what lengths or
into what new shapes they may grow; while cruives can-
not be, as they have not for centuries been, increased
either in number or efficiency, but on the contrary can
be, as they have been, greatly reduced, both as to their
obstructive and their destructive efiects. Nevertheless,
cruives are evils and excrescences, and their owners
would be great gainers by conceding, as all but two or
three of them are understood to be willing to do, that
they should be included in a measure al)olishing all
fixture fisheries, without distinction of sea or river, box
or net.

196 THE SALMON.

Besides all tlie facts and arguments against fixed
nets, there is the important if not conclusive considera-
tion, that, speaking as to legislation, the question is
really res judicata. It has been before many tribunals,
and all, after hearing evidence, have come to the same
decision. Time after time, Royal Commissions and
Committees of both Houses of Parliament have con-
demned the existing system, and handed it over to the
Government and the law for execution. That sentence
has already been carried out for England, and is in pro-
cess of being carried out for Ireland ; and it is anomalous,
as well as unreasonable and unjust, that when all are
under the same condemnation, the system should be
brought to execution as to England and Ireland, and
reprieved as to Scotland, where its earliest and its
greatest offences have been committed. The exceeding
anomalousness of this surely temporary state of things
is illustrated very curiously, if rather in caricature, by
the fact, that certain fixed nets are suppressed in Scot-
land (after 1st January next) by the late Scotch Act,
and that these are the only nets of the kind, in Scotland
or elsewhere, which possessed the claim or excuse of
something like antiquity. The more immediate reason for
making the shores of the Solway Firth an exception to
the rest of Scotland is, that the proprietors on the Eng-
lish shore very justly and naturally insisted that, as the
nets on the two sides of the firth, though on one side
they stand in Scotland, and on the other in England,
virtually captured the same broods of fish, they should
be subject to the same laws of fishing. In further illus-
tration of the anomalous and untenal^le condition of

FUTUPvE SALMON LEGISLATION. 197

things presently existing, there is the curious contrast
to the case of the Solway supplied by the case of the
Tweed, the mouth of which river may be regarded as
holding, on the east side of the island, the position cor-
responding to that which the Solway Firth holds on the
west. Wliilst on the Solway the new English law as to
fixtures is carried across into Scotland, on the Tweed
the Scottish law or want of law on the same subject, is
carried across into England — certain very destructive
fixed engines on the sea-shore of Northumberland, six or
seven miles south of the Border river mouth, being pre-
served l)y comprehension in the Tweed Act of 1859,
while all such engines farther south have been swept
away by the English Act of 1861. Why, in this matter,
do justice to Cumberland, and upon Dumfries and Kirk-
cudbright, and do injustice to Berwick by giving pri-
vilege to Northumberland ? Why knock down those
engines in the only place in Scotland where they were
of old date, and sanction or protect them where they
are innovations ? And why, on the other hand, preserve
them at only one place in England, and sweep them
away from all other English ground ? There is no
answer to these questions, except the temporary and
apologetic one, that there is a good time coming.

The difiiculties in the way of obtaining a legislative
measure on this subject which will make the Ihws square
with justice and with themselves, consist in the strength
of the " interest" concerned, and in the public, and con-
sequently the Parliament, having laboured under a
considerable amount of ignorance and misconception as
to the facts and equity of the case. But the enem}''s

198 THE SALMON.

strength is, to say the least, no greater than it was, whilst
the strength on the right side has become greater, both by
the discussions that have taken place, and by the actual
advances made in recent legislation. Formerly the de-
mand was that an evil existing in all the Three King-
doms should be put down just because it was an evil,
and, as the old Scotch Statutes had it, was an evil " de-
structive of the commoun weill." But now, in addition,
we can raise the cry of "justice to Scotland"— -can com-
plain that the Scotch proprietors and public are refused
the justice which has lately been accorded to England
and even to Ireland. Remembering, however, the feeble
and straggling support and the vigorous and compact
resistance which the Lord Advocate found when he
brought in his Bill of 1861, it may be doubted whether
the Government could, in the meanwhile, be induced to
renew a proposition which made so many enemies, and
attracted so few and such captious friends. It is there-
fore of the more importance to inquire whether there is
not some possibility of settling the question without
legislation ; or, to come to the point at once, by the
Crow^n, as the owner of the fisheries on all the ungranted
coasts, forcing or frightening the fixture-fishers on the
granted coast into submission, by threatening, and
threatening in earnest, to grant or lease the whole un-
granted coast to new competitors. The Scottish sea-
coasts, as to salmon-fishery, may, or lately might, be
viewed as divided into three parts — a part which the
Crown had granted away, and which was fished in a way
the Crown never contemplated, and which the law never
sanctioned, though it may accidentally have omitted to

FUTURE SALMON LEUISLATION. 190

prohibit ; a part which the Crown had not granted
away, but which was fished by the ex adverso proprie-
tors of the soil without warrant ; and a part which was
ungranted and unfished. When, in 1859, the decision of
the House of Lords, sitting in appeal, settled that no
person had a right to fish salmon in the Scotch seas
without grant from the Crown, the Commissioners of
Woods, Forests, and Land Revenue sent out circulars to
345 persons, exercising salmon -fishing on the sea-coast,
without being positively known to possess charters, in-
forming them that, unless they possessed valid titles
under express grant from the Crown, the fisheries were
the property of the Crown, and subject to the administra-
tion of the Land Revenue Commissioners, but offering,
in the cases where want of title was admitted, to give a
short lease of the fisheries at a rental proportionate to
the profits of the three years preceding. About a year
after those circulars were issued, the Solicitor of the
Land Revenue Commissioners stated to a Committee of
the House of Lords, that 120 out of the 345 persons had
sent no answer, that 180 titles were under investigation,
and that twenty-nine persons had confessed want of title,
and accepted short leases at rents amounting in all to
about £600. Of the progress that has since been made
little information has been allowed to transpire ; but we
believe that the number of persons who have acknow-
ledged want of title, and agreed to pay rent as temporary
tenants of the Crown, has at least doubled since 1860,
and that the rent now drawn on behalf of the public from
this partially recovered property is upwards of £1200.
Here is a pretty good beginning — £1200 a year restored

200 THE SALMON.

to the public revenue, though there are as yet only about
50 convicts out of 345 suspects. But there is a great field
beyond this one — a large though unascertained extent
of coast which the Crown has never granted, and which
nobody has taken illegal leave to fish. That property,
which is public property, ought not to be allowed to lie
unproductive ; it should be made to yield revenue, or
perhaps something better than revenue. Two courses
are open to the Commissioners of Land Revenue, besides
the course pursued previous to the decision declaring the
property to be the Crown's, and which it would be absurd
and unjust any longer to continue. They may sell or let
to the highest bidder all the coast still belonging to the
Crown, whether or not previously fished ; and so, for a
time, obtain a great revenue for the department, though
to the ultimate injury of the general interests of the fish-
eries, and of each particular interest, that of the depart-
ment included. Or they may intimate to the pro|)rietors
who have grants of fisheries on the coast, that if they con
sent to put down their fixtures, and return to the modes
by Avhich the}' originally fished, and by which alone other
proprietors are allowed to fish, the Crown will do the
same over all the coast which it still retains, and perhaps
will engage not to fish in any way at least those parts
of the coast that have heretofore not been fished at all —
with certification that, if the fixed-netters will not consent
to this compromise or mutual concession, the Crown will
hand over every inch of its coast to the highest bidder,
to be fished as they fish, which would very soon leave
them nothing to fish for. That this result can be brought
about, at least in a great many localities, is clear, by its

FUTURE SALMON LEGISLATION. 201

having in many cases been brought about abeady, through
the appUcation of much smaller means than are at the
command of the Crown. Some of the fisheries on the
the Moray Firth, at which fixtures were earliest used,
have been brought to worthlessness by the increase in
the number of their neighbours ; and after the first
stake-net erected on the coast of Aberdeenshire had
raised the rental of that fishery from a mere trifle to
£300, the erection of similar nets in the same district
had the almost immediate effect of brino-inor back the
rent of the first offender to a trifle again. With such
examples before them, it is reasonable to hope that the
fixed-net fishers might concede to fear what they have
not unnaturally refused to fair-play, or at least that so
many of them might thus become reasonable on compul-
sion that the passing of an Act satisfactorily settling the
whole matter would become easy and certain. At all
events, it is only fair and well worth while to try,
especially as even failure would be gain, ])y allotting the
necessarily temporary profits of the bad system to the
public instead of to individuals, while at present there is
a class of men virtually paid with pul:)lic money to injure
the public interests.

Scarcely less important than the suppression of fix-
tures used for capture and obstruction — in a large view,
even more important and more urgent — is the question
of legislation for the prevention and cure of pollution
and poisoning in all running waters. The question here
is not merely whether we shall preserve our fish, but
whether we shall preserve our rivers — whether our rivers

202 THE SALMON.

shall be rivers or sewers, beauties or deformities, pleasures
or plagues.

There is, however, a possibility worth guarding
against, that a separation may be made in legislation
and in popular discussion — as indeed it has to some ex-
tent been made already — between that kind or degree of
pollution which destroys fish, and that kind or degree
which destroys rivers in other respects. In this case,
rather unluckily, the general question of the purification
of rivers does not cjuite necessarily include the perhaps
smaller question of the preservation of fish, nor does the
preservation of the fish quite necessarily include the puri-
fication of the rivers. The fish, or at least the salmon,
in a river may be to a great extent preserved, and yet
that river he a public nuisance ; and on the other hand,
the public nuisance may be greatly abated by means
destructive of the fish. The existing fishery laws have
clauses prohibiting the putting into rivers of any liquid
or solid matter destructive of fish, but interfering no
further ; whilst there is at present a visible danger that
those interested in the purification of rivers on other
grounds than those relating to fisheries may seek, as
in some quarters they are already seeking, to attain their
ends by means which, saving the noses and in some
degree the health of the public, would bring the fish to
sacrifice.

The English Fisheries Act imposes penalties upon
" every person who causes or knowingly permits to flow,
or puts or knowingly permits to be put, into any waters
containing salmon, or into any tributaries thereof, any
liquid or solid matter, to such an extent as to cause the

FUTUllE SALMON LEGISLATION. 203

waters to poison or kill fish," unless he can prove that
he has " used the best practicable means, within a rea-
sonable cost," to render the matter harmless. The clause
in the Scotch Act is almost precisely the same, but spe-
cifies saw-dust among noxious and prohibited matters.
There is no doubt that much harm is prevented by these
clauses on some salmon rivers ; but, besides that they
do not apply to rivers not containing salmon, it will be
noted that even in salmon rivers they do not apply to
any kind of pollution or nuisance which is not absolutely
poisonous to fish. So far as the clauses in the Fishery
Acts extend, a river may give out offensive stenches
through all its course, and yet escape the law, for it is
found that ordinary town sewage, though most ofi'ensive
to men, is not fatal to fish. " It has been clearly shown,"
said the English Commissioners of Inquiry, " that a very
considerable amount of pollution may exist at certain
points in a river without destroying the salmon or pre-
venting them from passing up to spawn, provided the
upper waters are favourable for that purpose, and that
no artificial obstructions bar their way." In this way,
the fisheries might be preserved, and yet the public
nuisance remain. It is true that in various Acts, both
English and Scotch, there are enactments against the
poisoning of rivers in other respects : for instance, the
Scotch Kemoval of Nuisances Act (1856) imposes a
penalty of £50 on "any person engaged in the manu-
facture of gas, naphtha, vitriol, or dye-stufi"s, or in any
trade in which the refuse produced in any such manu-
facture is used, who shall at any time cause or suffer to
be brought or to flow into any streams, etc., any washing

204 THE SALMON.

or other substance produced in any such manufacture, or
shall wilfully do any act connected with any such manu-
facture whereby the water in any such stream, etc.,
shall be fouled." This enactment has in some cases been
beneficially put in operation, and the English Inspectors
of Fisheries report (1863) that, under similar enactments
in England, a great deal of pollution had been prevented,
and some cured, not only without loss, but with con-
siderable profit to the manufacturers, especially gas
manufacturers and papermakers. There is, however, a
great want both of uniformity and effectiveness in the
laws relating to this species of nuisance, and as the
nuisance is daily growing greater, the need of a general
and effective law is daily becoming more felt and more
clearly expressed.

There is here a little danger, as well as a great op-
portunity. There is the danger that those whose chief
object is only the suppression of bad smells may consent
to attain tlieii* object by some means, such as the dis-
charge of chloride of lime, which, though depopulating
the rivers, might lessen the evil to the dwellers on the
river-banks. There is a great opportunity to all con-
cerned, whether for property, or sport, or health, to make
common cause against a great evil, which every day
becomes not only greater, but more difficult of remedy,
and which ah'eady has attained such magnitude and is
invested with such difficulties that redress is not likely
to be obtained by any means short of an employment
of all the strength that can be obtained by the efforts
of special interests, combined with the action of public
opinion.

FUTURE SALMON LEGISLATION. 205

It is encouraging to perceive (though, as we shall
see, there are local cases to the contrary) that some at
least of the leaders in the causes both of Sanitaryism and
of Fishery Preservation are awaking to the propriety and
importance of making common cause in this matter.
Lords Ebury and Shaftesbury, " on behalf of the sanitary
associations of Great Britain," lia^'e united with Lord
Saltoun, the President, and Lord Llanover, the Vice-
President, of the Fisheries Preservation Association, in
addressing a statement to Lord Palmerston, in which
they set forth the magnitude to which the evils have
attained, and the necessity for immediate legislation,
directed to preserving alike the health of men and the
lives of fish.

That the pollution of the rivers of the country is so
great and general as to have become a national evil, was
the conclusion arrived at several years ago by the Royal
Commissioners on the Sewage of Towns, — a conclusion
arrived at without any reference to the interests of the
fisheries, but solely with a view to the public comfort
and health ; and when the interests of the fisheries are
also taken into consideration, the evil appears still greater
and still more truly national. This evil may be regarded
as presenting itself in two forms : in some instances,
inland towns send their impurities through far-stretching
rural districts ; in others, the villages and manufactories
on a river send down stench and pestilence on great seats
of population below. The great and unpleasant question
whether it is necessary or endurable that all the rivers
of the country should be transformed into common
sewers, has been raised earliest and as yet chiefly in the

206 THE SALMON.

former class of cases — and even in that class by causes
which are comparatively new. The evils in this respect,
arising from the increased and ever-increasing size of
onr inland towns, and the great though yet but com-
mencing change in domestic arrangements, and in the
system of draining and sewage, may be said to be almost
new things, at least on the chief rivers frequented by
salmon ; but they are growing rapidly, and are in their
nature difficult and sometimes impossible to arrest, unless
taken in their beginnings. Till lately, our large towns
were chiefly (in Scotland entirely) on the coast, or within
tide-reach on some estuary or navigable river, and their
drainage went off to the sea with comparatively little
harm or offence, except in such extreme cases as London
and perhaps Glasgow. It was assumed, too, that this
state of things was permanent and unalterable. About
sixty years ago, a traveller (Kev. James Hall), beginning
an account of his tour through Scotland, thus refers to
the considerations which determined his choice of route :
" There never was and never will be any thriving city or
village at a distance from water-carriage, and every large
city or town always has been and always will be situated
either on the sea-coast or on the banks of some navigable
river." But now the railway system, with its cheap and
rapid carriage of materials, goods, and fuel, is enabling
manufacturing towns to rise in far inland localities, and
the fact is gradually appearing that such towns, sending
their drainage for scores of miles down the rivers, do, or
at least will, create a really national nuisance — a nuisance
greater than that produced by towns many times their
size situated within the cleansinor influences of the sea-

FUTURE SALMON LEGISLATION. 20 7

tide. Take the' Tweed for an instance. The woollen
manufacturers on the banks of the Tweed and its tribu-
taries now make almost no use of the wool produced on
the hills overhanging their own tall chimneys, but bring
their materials from Saxony and Australia, their coals
from the Lothians and Northumberland, and find their
markets over all the world ; what has been done there
(-an and we hope will be done in other inland districts ;
and we rejoice to see Hawick, Selkirk, and Galashiels
already on their way to be Bradfords and Halifaxes.
But contemplate the results of having large towns fifty
or sixty miles from the sea — with contributions from
every village and even farm house — sending their whole
refuse down the river-channel through five counties !
Look at what the Tweed is now, in contrast with what
will be its look and smell at that not distant then. See
her and hers rolling along, beautiful and beautifying,
through regions where every ruin is history and every
glen is song ; gathering her tributes from a thousand
hills — from where sweet Teviot sings unceasingly its
" Farewell to Cheviot's mountains blue ;" where pensive
Yarrow winds like a silver chain amid "the dowie dens;"
where, in the sad and silent "Forest" —

" The wildered Ettrick wanders by,
Loud miirmiiring to the careless moon ; "

till, grown stately, massive, and brimming, "Tweed's
fair river, broad and deep," wheeling beneath the donjon
keep of Norham and the battlements of Berwick, sinks
into the ocean as glittering pure as when she liroke away
from her native hills. Is all this to vanish, and in its
place a pestilential sewer ? Is that which now spreads

208 THE SALxMON.

health and beauty around, to l^econie an eye-sore and a
nose-sore extending over half the breadth of the Island ?
Shall the turrets of Abbotsford be reflected from a mon-
ster gutter, all stains and stench ? Shall fair Melrose,
instead of being " viewed aright by the pale moonlight,"
be nosed in the dark ? Forbid it, all the powers of Par-
liament ! If indeed that prohibition could not be uttered
without destroying or impeding the brisk and cheerful
industry which has sprung up among those sweet hills,
there might be nothing for it but to sigh and submit.
But it would be almost profane to doubt that from so
great an evil there must be means of escape — that Hawick
may prosper and yet Tweed be preserved. The manu-
facturers in great towns have already been made to con-
sume their smoke, and the time seems coming when
compulsion to the same effect will be applied even to
London householders — when even " the sacred domestic
hearth" shall be invaded by the oflicers of Sanitaryism.
The Londoners have agreed to impose upon themselves a
vast expense, in order to cease making a sewer of their
own Thames ; and can it be doubted that if the people
of the towns on the Tweed and other such rivers shall
fciil to find the will, there will be comparatively little
difficulty in the Legislature finding the luay to prevent
their doing what they unhappily like with a river which
is not their own, l^ut is the property of five counties, and
the pride of Two Kingdoms ?

Nor, as already said, is the case one in which the
towns are always the offenders, and the rural districts
the sufferers ; sometimes the position of the parties is
reversed, and country gives town as bad as it gets.

FUTURE SALMON LEGISLATION. 209

When a river, near its mouth, runs through a great town,
as most rivers do, all the polluting and noxious matter,
liquid and solid, sent out from the dwelling-houses and
manufactories of the country above, comes past the doors
of tens or hundreds of thousands of people, who probably
are successfully labouring to protect themselves from
themselves, but find it difficult or impossible, as it is cer-
tainly very hard, to protect themselves from their neigh-
bours. In at least one view, there is even a greater
injustice in this case than in the other ; a populous in-
land town may be said to have more natural right to
send its nuisances through thinly populated rural dis-
tricts, than thinly populated rural districts have to take
the same improper liberty with a great sea-coast town.
In illustration of this, as of the other form of the evil,
take an actual instance. The great towns of Edinburgh
and Leith, having the same small river running through
both, lately agreed upon costly measures to keep the
open water-course free from the town sewage. It w^as
found, however, that, owing to the presence of villages
and manufactories farther up the stream, the water
came into the precincts of the city in an impure and
noisome condition. Consequently, or naturally, it was
proposed that the few people above, or at least the
manufacturers, should take measures to the same end
as the many people below ; that, when 200,000 people
were subjecting themselves to trouble and taxation to
rescue a river from the condition of a nuisance caused
by the multifarious occupati(3ns of two large towns,
those efforts and sacrifices should not be neutralized by
the neglect of a dozen or two of people beyond the

o

210 THE SALMON.

towns to do likewise, for their own as well as their
neighbours' good. It was pleaded, however, for the
people above, that while they discoloured and defiled
the water, they did so with ingredients which, though
certainly rendering it poisonous to man, beast, and fish,
yet prevented, killed, or cured stench, and might l)e made
to operate more efficaciously to that end. This plea was
practically allowed, neither party taking any account of
the fact that the ingredients (chiefly chloride of lime)
which are most effectual to prevent stench arising from
the water, are also most efiectual to produce death to
everything under or even upon the water. Multitudes
of similar case^ elsewhere may possibly be settled in a
similar way, the public in the matter of rivers content-
ing itself with saving its nose, to the deprivation of its
mouth and the damage of its eyes, to say nothing of
what there is much to be said about, the extirpation of
all the creatures to which the waters have been given
as a dwelling-place. It is a compromise which should
be discountenanced and resisted in the interest not only
of fish, and of all who catch fish, but of all who eat
fish, and all who value either the beauties or the edibles
which nature has provided. It is a device for making a
solitude, and calling it purity ; for depriving rivers of
life, and boasting that there is no corruption in their
wretched remains. Thus to kill or depopulate rivers
may be denounced as a violation of almost everything
sacred ; of justice, for it robs some men for the con-
venience of others ; of reason, for it is perpetrating an
injury which is at once enormous and avoidable ; of
nature, and even of religion, for the command is, that
the waters shall bring forth abundantly.

FUTURE S.^LMON LEGISLATION. 211

Nevertheless, some people venture to say that the
infliction of sterility on the waters by artificial means is
natural, because river-courses are the natural drains of
the country, and because thus it is natural that all
dirt should descend through these drains. But there is
neither proof nor probability as to this being a correct
interpretation of the designs of Nature in the making of
rivers ; and though it were otherwise, the fact would not
be much to the purpose. Nature, we beg to suggest,
intended river-courses for rivers, and rivers are naturally
composed of water that rises from the ground and water
that falls from the clouds. There is no written proof
nor visible probability that Nature designed river-courses
as conduits or open sewers for the running off of lime,
soda, and vitriol. On the contrary, there is good evi-
dence that Nature intended rivers, among other good
purposes, to furnisli a supply of drink to man, beast, and
bird, to say nothing of fish ; and it is a fair inference
that whatever renders rivers unfit for so obvious and
great a purpose, is a violation of the designs of Nature.
Indeed, it would be quite enough to say that Nature,
beyond all doubt, designed rivers to be the habitation of
fish ; and that if lime, vitriol, soda, and filth are in-
compatible with fish, it is not the fish, but the filth, that
is out of place. But suppose it proved or likely that
Nature had any such grotesque and inconsistent design
as is so unwarrantably imputed to her, it is sometimes
necessary, for the preservation of life and for other good
and sufficient causes, to counteract or neutralize even
natural operations. People do this habitually in personal
and domestic matters, and even in this very matter of

212 THE SALMON.

drainage, so far as it is personal or domestic. It is natural
for the efflux from a dwelling-house to go down the
slope ; but if that slope happens to lead through the
householder's grounds or garden, or past his windows, he
is careful to cover up the stream from sight and smell,
till, and only till, it reaches a spot where he can dis-
tribute the nuisance among his neighbours. Whenever
the filth reaches the river or natural water-course, some
people seem to think it becomes innocuous or almost
sacred, though in truth it has only become an injustice
as well as an evil, and has acquired a thousandfold
greater power of mischief. Why do people thus refuse
to let " Nature " have her way with their own noses, and
then argue that it is right and necessary that she should
be left free to take her will of the public nose ? Just
because " what is everybody's business is nobody's busi-
ness"— because everybody has been looking after him-
self, and nobody after the public. The importance of
the neglect is now, however, beginning to be discovered,
and both communities and the Legislature seem more
than formerly inclined to attend to a business much
more important than many things regarding which there
is much making of speeches and of laws.

The past neglect as to the polluting and poisoning of
rivers is the more remarkable that there is no want of
precedents for legislative protection and restriction in
matters of the same class. Take the case of the poison-
ing of the atmosphere. It is at least as natural for
smoke or fumes to rise into the air as for poisonous and
stinking substances to fall into the waters. Yet the law
compels all manufacturers, or others who send forth

FUTURE SALMON LEGISLATION. 213

offensive or injurious smoke and smells, either to render
their effluvium harmless by means of gigantic chimneys,
or to consume it on the premises. Since gigantic manu-
factories are thus trammelled and burdened to prevent
their deteriorating the atmosphere in their immediate
neighbourhood, is it not equitable and reasonable that
similar restrictions should be laid upon those who not
only deteriorate but poison the waters of many neigh-
bourhoods besides their own ? When the law puts re-
straint upon those whose operations could only injure
the hedges and herbage of three or four fields, why
should it give license to those who inflict loss, ugliness,
and disease on as many counties ?

214 THE SALMON.

CHAPTER VL

NON-LEGISLATIVE REMEDIES.

Domestic Breeding and Re<aring — Fish, Flesh, and Fowl — Revolution in the
Fish Market — " Peace, Reform, and Retrenchment."

Additional to all that has been clone, or may or
need be done, by the Legislature, are two vastly im-
portant means of increase and improvement, regarding
which the salmon-fishers can, if they choose, act as
their own legislators. These are — Better Nursing, and
Cheaper Fishing.

In the application of one of these means, a good be-
ginning has already been made, and the whole of that sub-
ject, of which unluckily salmon does not form the great-
est part, is obtaining a large share of public attention
and favour. Of all the " movements," indeed, in this age
of movements, there are few more important than that
which has for its object the increase of the supply of
food by the propagation and better culture of fish. It
is amazing that the subject has so long lain in neglect,
especially as in ancient times, when such matters had
much less interest and importance, a good deal was
both known and done, the monks of old having laboured
to improve the breeds and increase the produce of fish,
as carefully and almost as successfully as is now done

1

NON-LEGISLATIVE REMEDIES. 215

in the case of fowls. And why should fish be neglected
when so much care and cost are bestowed upon its con-
comitants ? Or, to take the question in a larger view,
is it not an ascertained fact that water, as well as land,
is capable of cultivation by man, so that, in some cases,
a piece of water may, by artificial means used in aid of
nature, be made as much more productive than it w^as
before the application of these means, as a field ploughed,
sown, and tended, is more productive than was the same
field in a state of nature and neglect ?

Yet even those supplies of fish which nature offers
man merely for the taking, have been strangely little
thought of, and almost altogether uncared for, either as
to saving them from waste and destruction, or as to in-
creasing the supply proportionally to the increase of the
demand or need. There are few objects regarding which
both the I.egislature and those engaged in the various
modes of production have of late years done or attempted
more than the increasing and cheapening of vegetable
and animal food ; with the result, not indeed of failure,
but neither certainly of quite keeping supply abreast of
the rajDidly advancing demand, or producing all the
plenty and the cheapness that some hoped, and some
feared, and almost all expected. But whilst legislative
changes, and the progress of our own agriculture, have,
during the last quarter of a century, made immense
additions to the food of the population of the United
Kingdom, yet it is a fact that (with the recent and
temporary exception of wheat) food was scarcely ever so
steadily high in price, — a fact which is of itself sufficient
to indicate the wisdom of leaving no source of supply

216 THE SALMON.

neglected. The ports are open to the produce of all tlie
world, foreign cattle and sheep come in annually by-
hundreds of thousands, foreign pork, hams, beef, cheese,
and butter by millions of cwts., foreign corn and flour
by tens of millions of bushels ; and even all that is but
a bagatelle to the additions recently made to the supplies
both of grain and animal food, through the extended
cultivation, improved methods, and greater enterprise
and expenditure of our own agriculture. Yet, after all,
here we are, with beef and mutton at lOd., and butter at
Is. 4d. the pound, or not greatly short of double the prices
to which many of this generation were at one time ac-
customed. All this while, it seems to have been forgotten
not only that man does not live by bread alone, but
that there is a variety or many varieties of food called
fish, which in popular colloquy has always been thought
not unworthy to he classed along with flesh. " Fish and
flesh " have generally been regarded as both though per-
haps not equally good things ; but whilst laws, capital,
and skill have been liusy promoting the production of
flesh, the kindred commodity has got but little attention
from the law, and still less from capital, skill, or even
industry — or at least the efl'orts to increase the supply
have been utterly ridiculous in comparison with the
enormous extension of the market.

It has been too little noted that whilst the demand
for fish has received great increase from the improved
condition of the mass of the people and the dearness of
other kinds of food, the available or reachable market, at
least for fresh fish, has within not many years been en-
tirely revolutionized, or rather has received an almost

NON-LEGISLATIVE REMEDIES. 217

indefinite extension. It may be said that, until a few
years ago, the consumption of fresh fish was almost entirely
confined to the section of the population on or near the
sea-coast, and indeed chiefly to the proportion of that
section living in towns or easily accessible villages. The
expense, and stiU more the twie of inland carriage were
almost insuperable obstacles as to the great mass of
people. The railways have revolutionized all that, and,
by cheapness and quickness of carriage, have made sea-
fish a comparatively common article of diet in the most
inland districts. To take an illustration from our own
neighbourhood, the picturesque fishwives of Newhaven
and Fisherrow are now almost as familiar spectacles in
such towns as Selkirk and Hawick as in Edinburgh or
Leith, going with full " creels " by the morning trains,
and returning with full pockets in the evening. Nor is
it only the interior of Scotland that has thus obtained a
share in the benefits formerly almost monopolized by the
dwellers on the shore — the Scotch coasts are made to
supply even the farthest parts of England. Thus all
but a fraction of the fish landed at the numerous fishing-
towns in the east of Fife are (or lately were) carried oft'
by steamer and rail to Liverpool, Manchester, and Lon-
don ; and any man looking about him in Birmingham,
Nottingham, and others of the most inland towns of
England, will see in the fishmongers' windows grounds
for a conclusion, which a talk with the fishmongers them-
selves will confirm, that the people of those regions are
more prone to the consumption of fish, and especially of
sea-fish, than the people nearer the coast, who liad been
accustomed for generations to oljtain with ease what has

218 THE SALMON.

only of late Ijeen Ijrouglit witliiu reach of tlie dwellers
in the interior. It would seem, indeed, as if a natural
appetite had acquired additional strength from long and
compulsory disuse. One effect, of course, is an equaliza-
tion of price, under which the chief gainers have been
the better-off people of the interior, and the chief losers
the poor people of the towns near the coast. Formerly,
sea-fish may be said to have been unattainable either by
the middle or the poorer classes in the interior, but
obtainable even by the poor classes near the sea. Now,
by the cheapness and quickness of carriage, the article
has in the interior been brought within reach of the
middle classes, but, by another part of the same opera-
tion, has, in the coast districts, been raised above the
reach of many or most of the poor. Further, in com-
parison with this extension of the market, there has been
no adec^uate effort to increase the supply ; and it is to
be feared that such efforts as have been made have been
rather in the way of more severely fishing the old ground
than of finding or using new grounds. It must be ad-
mitted that there are considerable difficulties as to a more
effective and systematic working of the sea-fisheries —
such as the employment being mainly that of a peculiar
people, not apt at new methods, not much available to
capital and organization, and not admitting of any great
increase in numbers ; also, our comparative ignorance of
the habits and habitats of sea-fish, and the impractica-
bility of much care or control over them. Still, it is
matter of surprise that, in this country, with capital so
often in want of outlets and so often running desperate
risks, something more should not have been and is not

NON-LEGISLATIVE REMEDIES. 219

even now to be attempted in this department, to bring
nearer to a demand which has so rapidly increased a
supply which is drawn from a free and almost limitless
source.

As to the fresh waters, matters have been still worse,
and with less excuse ; for, besides having only now begun
to think of aiding or supplementing the operations of
Nature, we have been carelessly and wantonly counter-
acting her. The rivers and lakes are more within our
vision and within our power than the sea. Yet there,
where should lie the advantage, has lain the evil. The
comparative power we possess over the inhabitants of
our fresh waters, has been used to their destruction and
our own loss. We have neglected the seas, but happily to
a large extent we have not been able to abuse or desolate
them. But in the rivers and lakes, filled by Nature with
valual)le food, requiring neither cultivation, nor manure,
nor feeding — requiring nothing, in fact, but to be spared
during the season when they are multiplying their spe-
cies, and when they are worthless anywhere but in the
water, — we have, partly from greed, partly from ignor-
ance, partly from the operation of certain popular preju-
dices, been willing, as we have been able, grossly to abuse
our Ijounties. One reason why the public has been so
neglectful of its interest in this matter is, that what is
really the main question regarding our rivers and lakes —
the obtaining from them of a supply of food — has been
almost lost sight of amid the frequent controversies be-
tween interests conflicting with one another on matters
which, to a superficial view, did not much concern the
public. People concluded that a matter about which

22 0 THE SALMON.

certain parties fought so fiercely, each for its own hand,
could concern only the parties so very much interested ;
and especially an idea has grown up and prevailed, that
questions about fisheries are mainly questions, not for the
consumers, but for the amateur catchers, of fish. Because
it happens that some fish, besides afibrding nutriment in
the eating, afford also amusement in the catching, a great
many persons conclude, when they hear about fish and
fisheries, that the subject is one for sportsmen ; and from
that conclusion they proceed, under the stimulus of a
feeling derived fi'om the abuses of game-preserving, to
the further conclusion that any proposal for the increase
of fish is a thing to l)e discouraged. This feeling is so
strong in many quarters, that it is pretty certain that if
it had been practicable to extract " sport" from the shoot-
ing or chasing of sheep, sheep would in many quarters have
been denounced as " vermin," and the stealers of them have
been popularly regarded as a species of irregular or ille-
gitimate benefactors of the community. But all this is a
mistake ; the public have an interest of the same kind,
and of scarcely smaller degree, in the increase of fish as
in the increase of flesh or corn. That interest has, till of
late, been much neglected by the Legislature ; the neglect
has been partly repaired ; and now has arrived another
question, • whether, besides refraining from hindering
Nature, man cannot, in the production of this as of other
kinds of food, easily and greatly help her.

Water as well as land was designed to provide food
for man ; and not only is there no reason why man
should destroy the one source while laboriously fostering
the other, but there is no obstacle in Nature to water

NON-LEGISLATIVE IlEMKDIES. 221

being, like land, rendered immensely more productive by
the appliances of art or skill. Water may, in truth, be
said to be naturally more productive than land — many
kinds of fish, including the most valuable, reproduce their
kind by tens of thousands per pair every year ; but in
this fact must 1:>e recognised, too, a provision of Natuie
to compensate for the incomparably greater waste or de-
struction which afflicts the inhabitants of the water than
at least any useful species upon the land. The fact, how-
ever, that Nature, for whatever ends, has made the water
more prolific than the land, is no reason at all why man
should reduce the water to sterility while making such
efforts to maintain and increase the fertility of the land ;
nay, should even destroy the water with what might
further enrich the land. For it is a fact, that whilst the
utmost that skill, capital, and labour could do has been
done for the land, not only has nothing been done for
the water, but a great deal has been done against it ; and
especially, enormous mischief is done by materials that
should be kept to give fertility to the land being sent
away to inflict sterility on the waters.

At last, however, something is being done for the
water ; the discovery has been made, or re-made, that
man can, by enclosure and cultivation, do perhaps as
much for fish as he can for plants. Pisciculture, or the
cultivation of fish, is now a great industry in France, and
is beginning to assume large proportions even in this
country. To narrate all that has been done would be here
quite out of place, for our topic is only salmon, which, as
a migratory fish, must always form a separate or special,
if not a comparatively small department of this neAv

222 THE SALMON.

industry ; besides which, the subject is treated with the
care and minuteness it requires in the recent volumes of
Mr. Frank Buckland and Mr. Francis Francis. There is
no dispute, however, as to the fact that the results in
France have been great ; there is not the slightest reason
to doubt that they will be proportionally great here ; and
that those who have laboured and are labouring to in-
crease and improve this mode of producing food, are
labouring for a great public good. If he is a national
benefactor who makes two blades grow in place of one,
what shall be said of him who makes ten thousand fish
swim where only two fish swam before ?

Of course, as in all other things, and especially in all
the beginnings of things, there have been and will be
some mistakes — chiefly, as we think, in the matter of
acclimatization, or the transplanting, so to speak, of the fish
from one country or district where it is indigenous to an-
other where it is exotic. To populate where the inhabitants
had become extinct or scarce, is quite a different thing
from bringing in some new race among a piscine com-
munity already sufficiently numerous for the local means
of livelihood. In waters not actually poisoned, or other
wise artificially desolated, the number or amount of 7'esi-
dent fish is, generally speaking, regulated by the amount
of food ; and to bring more fish to a river so conditioned
does not in the end really operate as an increase of the
quantity of fish, but only as a change of the kind. In
many cases the change may be for the better ; in all cases
where it is practicable, it would be well to cultivate salmon
and trout, for instance, to the displacing of chub and perch.
But sometimes we see an opposite course adopted, and

NON-LEGISLATIVE REMEDIES. 223

other important considerations overlooked. Thus, the
late experiment, in one sense quite successful, of intro-
ducing grayling into the upper portions of the river
Clyde, is open to grave doubts. It may fairly be assumed
that the supply of trout in the Clyde was up to the
supply of food, or at least if it were not, it was owing
to injurious causes to which grayling will be equally
liable ; so that to introduce grayling was practically to
make a proportionate diminution in trout. Now, the
grayling, though a good fish, is not so good a fish as the
trout, and so the exchange was for the worse. Then the
grayling is a fish which is in season during winter ; and
though angling at Christmas may do very well in Devon-
shire, or the other natural habitats of the grayling, it
would be both an unpleasant and unproductive employ-
ment in the Upper Ward of Lanarkshire. Finally, when
grayling are in season, trout are spawning, and vice
versa ; and, as the two species have the same haunts, the
same process will, almost all the year round, be effective
in slaying alike the clean and the unclean, and any law
that may be made to the contrary will be of no effect.

There can, however, be no mistakes of this class as to
the artificial introduction or rearing of salmon in any
river; for, besides that the salmon is not a formidable
competitor with any other species as to food, it is the
most valuable and desirable of all fish. Of course there
is, in the case of salmon, the heavy drawback arising
from its being migratory and vagabond in its instincts
and habits ; but still much can be done, and not a little
has been done, to increase the stock of salmon by semi-
artificial propagation and semi-domestic rearing. It is

224 THE SALMON.

obvious that salmon ah ovo, and before that, up to the
age of puberty, are, in their natural abodes, exposed to
very great perils, the chief of which may be classed as
preventible. Thus, there is enormous loss by spawn
being deposited during floods, when the rivers are high,
in positions where, when the waters fall, it is destroyed
by frosts or drought, or trampled under foot of man and
beast ; an evil of late very greatly increased by the ex-
tension of land drainage, especially the hill or open drain-
age, which causes the rivers both to rise higher and to
sink lower and more rapidly. Then great quantities of
the ova are devoured by fish and birds ; and after the
fish are hatched, their dangers from other sources, up to
the period of their seaward emigration, are still greater.
These and sundry other evils can be avoided, to a great
extent, by semi-domestic rearing ; the eggs can be pre-
served from accident, and the young kept separate from
their natural enemies until the time comes when they
themselves think they have sufficient strength and know-
ledge to seek their fortunes abroad. The extent to which
the preventible evils operate, and to which they may be
cured, cannot be stated with precision, but enough is
known to indicate, with considerable certainty, that a
very considerable work of restoration may be accom-
plished. Sir Humphry Davy's estimate was that, on the
average, each salmon deposits 17,000 eggs, of which only
800 come to perfection ; and although even his authority
on such a point is not decisive, we have nothing better.
Then as to the destruction from various causes that takes
place after the hatching, we may form, though not an
arithmetically accurate, a sufficiently clcni' and Jroye idea,

NON-LEGISLATIVE REMEDIES. 225

by merely reflecting for a moment on the fact (after
making all allowance for the number killed by man), that
a fish which nniltiplies itself eight hundred fold ever}^
year is yet saved from ra})id decline only by a great
amount of legislative protection and favour.

AVliat breeding-ponds have already done and have
shown ccDi be done, in applying a remedy at this point, is
striking. The ova deposited at Stormontheld in the first
year (1853) were 300,01)0 ; the tish hatched and brought
up to the migratory age were, according to the best
census practicable, about 260,000. In other words, while
(accepting Sir Humphry's statement) only one in twenty
of the eggs deposited in the natural spawning-beds are
hatched, the proportion hatched of those deposited in the
artificial ponds is something like nine in ten. Similar
results have been obtained at Stormontfield in each year
of the last ten, or rather iii each alternate year, there
having been, until lately, only one pond, and it having
for some years been held desirable, owing to the fry of
each propagation departing in two difierent years, not
to introduce a new brood into the pond till all of the
former brood had departed. By the five or six hatch-
ings which have taken place at Stormontfield, nearly
a million and a half of sniolts have been furinshed to
the Tay, only a small though unascertainable propor-
tion of which would have reached that stage had they
and their parents been left to the natural or ordinary
chances of the open river. It is not practicable to ascertain
the extent to which these (jpc,' rations have contri1)uted to
the great rise in the produce of the Ta}^ fisheries which
has taken place witlun these few years, for other Ijeneficial

r

226 THE SALMON.

causes, such as the lengthening of the chjse-time, have
been at work during portions of the same period. A
similar remark applies, in a less degree, to the more
extensive operations carried on in Galway by Mr. Ash-
worth, who, since he resorted to transplanting and arti-
ficial rearing, along with better protection and other such
appliances, has found the produce or annual capture of
his fisheries to have increased no less than tenfold.

What the system of nursing and protecting the
young of the salmon till reaching the migratory stage can
do is plain enough, though not capable of exact measure-
ment : it aff'ords almost entire protection from the dangers
and destruction which beset eggs lying exposed for months
to floods and frost, and beasts, birds, and fishes of prey,
and also from those which beset the young fry, exposed
for more than a year or two years of the most helpless
period of their existence to hosts of devouring enemies,
human as w^ell as inhuman. What proportion of the enor-
mous destruction which undoubtedly befalls the salmon
race between birth and marriage accrues during the
period in which the race can be thus cared for, cannot
be ascertained ; Ijut it is certain, and it is enough, that
the loss or waste during that period is stupendous, and
the gain or saving of semi-domestic rearing proportion-
ally great.

What the system cannot accomplish, is equally ol)vi-
ous — it cannot, as things stand, do much or anything
for the fish after the age of infancy. And this is not
only a great drawback in itself, but it tends powerfully
to produce difiiculties and discouragements as to the
doing of what can really and 1)eneficially be done. One

XON-LEGISLATIVE KEMEDIES. 227

man breeds, and another catches ; one man pays, and
another profits. If the fish bred and nursed in ponds
could also be reared till near their full growth, under
the care of man, and for the profit of those who had
been at the cost of breeding and caring for them, we
might look with certainty for a great and rapid increase
in the number of salmon-nurseries, and for proportionate
results visible in the rivers and in the markets. But
the peculiarity of pisciculture as applied to salmon —
which has not been sufficiently taken into account by
those who have drawn inferences from the great success
attending the stocking of certain French rivers with
non-migratory fish — is, that, as soon as you have brought
your brood past the perils of birth and infancy, you must
let them forth to the world of waters — " the world not
their friend, nor (sufficiently) the world's law" — without
the thousandth part of a chance that they will ever
return to reward their early benefactors. " Upon the
river Thurso," said Mr. W. Dunbar to the House of
Lords Committee, in 1860, "I have artificial ponds, and
have had for some years, for the purpose of increasing
the fish ; and then these men put in their bag-nets, and
catch the fish which I have reared with the greatest
care in the world, before they come up to me." And
obviously this must be the common case. The obstacle,
however, is at least in part removable, if it were pos-
sible to devise and enforce any system by which the
salmon-trade could be made to act with some degree
of concert and co-operation — as indeed it does on the
Tay as to this one matter of breeding-ponds — instead
of its members striving, as at present, which shall do

228 THE SALMON.

most towards the extermination of the means wherc1)y
all of them alike have their living.

That such a system can Ije devised, or rather is
lying ready, 1)ut unused — that a vast reformation can
he wrought in the whole business of salmon-fishing,
with large profit to all concerned — is, we submit, a
great fact, and easy of demonstration ; though, like
most great truths or discoveries, there is difficulty in
getting it audience. We hold that the whole present
system of net-fishing for salmon proceeds on a false
plan, bequeathed from times of which the circumstances
were quite different, and that it performs exj^ensively
and ill what might he performed chea2:>ly and well. At
present, those who have a common though not an equal
interest compete against each other under artificial re-
strictions— or, so to speak, run a race against each other,
each runner heavily weighted, for a prize which belongs
to and ultimately goes to all of them in proportions as
ascertainable before as after the race. What we propose
is, that competition should cease, and that there should
come in its place amalgamation or co-operation.

The present system is a scramble : each man having
a few yards of river bends his efforts to catch as many
fish as he can ; and the grand object of all the innumer-
able and complicated laws on the subject is to preATnt
his efforts from being too effective. This is a system of
very natural growth ; l)ut it has ]iow grown to be a
great and unnecessary evil and an anachronism. The
proportionate value of every man's rights in any river
is now accurately ascertained : whv should not all the

NON-LEGISLATIVE 1!EMEDTES. 229

owners on any given liver form themselves, as it were,
into a joint-stock company, this man having a fourth
sliare, and that a fortieth, and then proceed to fish the
river in the way hest for all of them considered as one
interest, and divide the money proceeds among the
shareholders according to the number or proportion of
their shares ? More specifically, our radical reform is
this, — to erect or work in each river, at such place or
several places as might be most suitable, some engines
which shall, during periods properly regulated and re-
stricted, take possibly every fish which ascends to them,
or allow all to pass, dividing the expense and the produce
among the proprietors of the fisheries in the proportion
which t]ie present value of the fishery of each bears to
the present value of the whole.

That such engines are quite possible, there is no
doubt ; indeed, the wJiole aim of legislation hitherto
has been to prevent the erection of anything resembling
them. Keeping, then, this fact in view, how foolish and
wasteful the present system appears when scrutinized !
The salmon does and must travel for the whole extent
of his fresh-water journey along a road, so to sjjeak, of
a few yards wide. In many cases, we can at some part
or parts of that road erect a bar or pit-fall, ])y which we
may, when we wish, infallibly catch him, or through
which, when it suits our end, we may let him pass un-
molested. But i]istead of that, we prohibit all such
bars, and set some hundreds of men at some scores of
stations to make sliots at him as he darts past, shootino-,
too, be it rememljered, in the dark. There is nothing
analogous to this to l)e found any\^•here, keeping in mind

230 THE SALMON.

that the killing is for profit only. It is as if a warrener
should come among his rabbits with hundreds of beaters
and terriers, instead of quietly placing his traps at the
mouths of the burrows. Nay, that is but a feeble simi-
litude ; for there are hundreds of holes in the warren,
and but one passage in the river. Although salmon-
netting is not performed for sport, it really amounts,
when examined and described, to a very costly, unneces-
sary, and unamusing fish-hunt.

For an instance, follow the process of catching, or
failing to catch, a Tweed salmon. Descend a few
minutes into the German Ocean, somewhere about Holy
Island, and accompany a short way an individual of the
species Salmo solar, on his return, after months spent in
the deep hiding-places wdiere neither human eye nor
human knowledge has ever yet been able to follow him.
And who can resfard him without interest ! He is on
his first return to his native place, far up in " bonnie
Teviotdale," or among " the dowie dens of Yarrow ;"
and (which is more important to the present subject of
discourse) he is on his marriage-jaunt. But he is in
haste. Onward he goes — bump on the first of thirty
standing-nets which festoon the beach of Goswick. By
extraordinary good luck, he gets past the traps — and out
among the waiting seals and porpoises. After a sharp
run, this fortunate and coveted fish escapes into the
mouth of the river, — and whiz ! goes a " net-and- coble"
before his nose, ere he has enjoyed two minutes of the
fresh water. During his first hour's possession of his
new element, or three miles' progress, the same attempt
has been repeated somewhere about a score of times. A

NOX-LEGLSLATIVE REMEDIES. 231

change in the sport is then offered for his amusement.
The shooting is no longer done at random, and he sails
upwards thinking he has left all the fun behind ; but
chancing in his careless happiness to sh(jw a fin or make
a ripple in passing a " ford" or shallow, a resounding
" Pow !" (which is the Bermck or Northumbrian euph-
emism ioY pull), proceeds from the watcher, and a boat's
crew, rushing from the sheiling, shoot a net right across
his passage, beyond him and around him. Again let us
imagine him to be in luck, and to pass in this exhila-
rating manner upwards of fifty stations, each of them
with two nets, to say nothing now (for they have lately
been removed) of some ninety cairn nets, which, at
every spot where he was likely to seek rest, were set up
for his reception. This brings him as far as Coldstream
Bridge, where we shall leave him to cleave onward to
new dangers, for he is only " saved to-day, to-morrow
to be slain" — to fall by the rod of a Duke at Kelso, or
(which is at least quite as likely) by the leister of a
weaver at Peebles. But what is the summary of his
career thus far ? He has roused to the chase 350 men ;
there have been expended on him, in wages and mate-
rials alone (such is our careful calculation), at least £10 ;
he was worth 2s. id. ; and he's off!

This, of course, is an extreme case ; take, then, one
of an opposite character. Instead of a single fish, a
shoal, or, as it is technically called, a head have come
up. The same engines are set to work, but with great
success. Out of 500, 490 are captured, and ten make
their way onward, five (say) to be killed by the Dukes
or the weavers (we are stating fairly, from statistics.

232 THE SALMON.

the proportions killed by tlie net and rod), and live to
spawn ; and the same thing is possibly repeated, tid(.'
after tide, for weeks. Compared with both of these
extreme eases, and with all conceivabh^ cases, onr plan
assuredly would be an immense improvement.

Such engines as we propose, and as are known to
be perfectly practicable, would neither expend money
and labour in a blind and unsuccessful attempt to take
a single fish, nor slaughter all that entered for a week,
without regard either to the interests of those ab(ive, or
to the providing of a supply for the future. They would,
under such regulations as should be agreed on, capture
all within a certain proportion of time, and let all go
free within the remaining proportion. And they would
do all this at a mere fraction of the expense of the
present more harmful and less productive system. On
the Tweed, the cost of labour and materials absorbs
about two-thirds of the selling-price of the fish. That
is the cost of fishing the river by fifty stations. Our
plan might possibly work it l)y one, and certainly by
very few. And it must not be supposed that the
Tweed is an unfairly selected instance. On the con-
trary, if we had taken the Tay, where there are between
eighty and ninety stations, with two boats and two nets
at each, we should have brought out results at least as
effective for our purpose.

In dealino- with the various interests concerned in such
a change, we foresee no difficulties which may not easily
and equitably be overcome. In the times in which the
existing system arose, it would have been absurd to hope
for reasonable co-operation towards such an o])ject; and

XON-LEGISLATIVE KEMEDIES. 233

the law, being too weak and loose to enforce sul^mission
to arrangements for the general gO(3d, could only prohibit
whatever would give a local or individual monopoly, and
then abandon all to the barbarous and wasteful system
of " catch wlio can." But circumstances have now
changed, and the road to a rational method is open to us.
The absolute and relative value of every salmon- fishing
property being now pretty well ascertained, the propor-
tion which the share of each proprietor bears to the whole
of his river or district can be settled 1)y arbitration and
evidence, and that, of course, would be the proportion
which he should draw from the one common or Q-eneral
fishery. In making such an arrangement, some men
would doubtless think that they had been allotted less
than their share ; 1)ut even if any man were, according to
his own estimate, made worse ofi' proportionally, he would
nevertheless be Ijetter off positively ; he might be able
to think himself not so mucli benefited as his neighbours,
but he would not 1)e al)le to deny that he too had bene-
fited, and the public with him.

It is now m(3re than a dozen years since this radical
reform was propounded ; and a similar suggestion (of
which we were not then aware) was made privately, so
long ago as 1839, 1)y Mr. Thomson of Banchory, who
proposed to his brother-proprietors on tlie xVberdeen-
shire Dee that they should form themselves into " one
fishing company," and fish tlie river for the common
benefit, as near the mouth as practicable, with as few
engines as might be found sufficient. But up to this
hour the plan has only been smiled at or sneered at as
a chimera, although any specific or tangible ol)jection

234 THE SALMON.

brought against it has proceeded upon a misunderstand-
ing. Thus, it has been objected to as if necessarily
meaning the erection of one engine capable of capturing
or passing at will whatever might be thought the proper
proportion of fish to capture or to pass — a proportion
w^hich could be measured either by time or number. In
many rivers there are insuperable natural difficulties in
the way of erecting such an engine, but the substance or
principle of the proposal is simpl}^, that no more ma-
chinery should be used than is 7iecessary, or than would
be used if one man owned the whole river ; and there is
plenty of room between one engine, and one hundred
doing the work which could be as well or better done by
a dozen. Nothing has been said, or is likely to be said,
in disproof of the truth, that one effect of such a reform
would be a great saving of expense in wages and mate-
rials, which at present seem to amount, on the chief
fisheries, to nearly three-fourths of the total value of the
produce ; and that a still grander result would be, the
putting an end to wasteful strife, opening up a free field
for amicable co-operation, and making simple a hundred
questions which are now complex, by transforming, at
one stroke, the contending parties from competitors to
partners. In a word, it would introduce into the pisca-
torial realms the three great, well-known, and much-
coveted benefits of Peace, Reform, and Retrenchment.

THE END.

APPENDIX.

TABLE, showing the Open Seasons for Net-Fishing and for
EoD-FiSHiNG in the Kivers of Scotland, so far as fixed at
May 1864.

NET.

ROD.

Add,

Awe,

Feb. 16 to Aug. 31.
Feb. 11 to Aug. 26.

Feb. 16 to Oct. 31.
Feb. 11 to Oct. 31.

Beauly, ....
Berriedale, ....
Bervie, .....

Feb. 11 to Aug. 26.
Feb. 11 to Aug. 26.
Feb. 25 to Sept. 9-

Feb. 11 to Oct. 15.
Feb. 11 to Oct. 31.
Feb. 25 to Oct. 31.

Clyde and Leven, .

Conan, ....

Feb. 11 to Aug. 26.
Feb. 11 to Aug. 26.

Feb. 11 to Oct. 31.
Feb. 11 to Oct. 31.

Dee (Aberdeen), .
Dee (Kirkciulbiiglit), .
Deveron, ....
Doon, .....
Don,

Feb. 11 to Aug. 26.
Feb. 11 to Aug. 26.
Feb. 11 to Aug. 26.
Feb. 11 to Aug. 26.
Feb. 11 to Aug. 26.

Feb. 11 to Oct. 31.
Feb. 11 to Oct. 31.
Feb. 11 to Oct. 31.
Feb. 11 to Oct. 31.
Feb. 11 to Oct. 31.

Echaig, ....
Esk (North and South),

Feb. 16 to Aug. 31.
Feb. 16 to Aug. 31.

Feb. 16 to Oct. 31.
Feb. 16 to Oct. 31.

Findhorn, ....

Fleet

Forss, .....
Forth,

Feb. 11 to Aug. 26.
Feb. 25 to Sept. 9.
Feb. 11 to Aug. 26.
Feb. 11 to Aug. 26.

Feb. 11 to Oct. 10.
Feb. 25 to Oct. 31.
Feb. 11 to Oct. 31.
Feb. 1 1 to Oct. 1 5.

Girvan, ....

Feb. 25 to Sept. 9.

Feb. 25 to Oct. 31.

Kyle of Sutherland (Carron,
Cassely, Oikel, and Shin),

Feb. 1 1 to Aug. 26.

Feb. 11 to Oct. 15.

Luce,

Feb. 25 to Sept. 9.

Feb. 25 to Oct. 31.

Nairn,

Ness, .....
Nith

Feb. 11 to Aug. 26.
P'eb. 11 to Aug. 26.
Feb. 11 to Aug. 26.

Feb. 11 to Oct. 15.
Feb. 11 to Oct. 15.
Feb. 11 to Oct. 31.

Spey,

Stinchav, ....

Feb. 11 to Aug. 26.
Feb. 25 to Sept. 9.

Feb. 11 to Oct. 15.
Feb. 25 to Oct. 31.

Tay

Tweed (under Ant 1859),

Feb. 4 to Aug. 20.
Feb. 15 to Sept. 14.

Feb. 4 to Oct. 10.
Feb. 1 to Nov. 30.

Ugie,

Urr,

Feb. 25 to Sept. 9.
Feb. 25 to Sept. 9.

Feb. 25 to Oct. 31.
Feb. 25 to Oct. 31.

Ythan, ....

Feb. 25 to Sept. 9.

Feb. 25 to Oct. 31.

1

INDEX.

Aberdeen and Kincardine, Fixed
engines on coast of, 129.

Abor-igines of Borders did not use
fish, 3.

Acclimatization of fish, 222.

Acts (ancient) before and after Magna
Charta, 1?>5.

Acts, Repeal of thirty-three old, 174.

Adamson (llev. W. Agar), Paper by,
quoted, 89-90.

Adventures of a Tweed salmon, 230

Age when parr assumes appearances
and habits of smolt, 40.

Allusions to angling by British Poets,
25-27.

Aln, Bull-trout in, 71.

America (North), Abundance of sal-
mon in, 6.

American rivers, Depopulation of, 89.

Angler versus Butcher, 19-23.

Angler for salmon in the Tweed de-
scribed, 15-17.

Anglers good men, 24.

Angling, Charms of, 17.

Anomalies (apparent) not to inter-
fere with settlement of period of
migration, 44.

Anthony competing with Cleopatra us
an angler, 29.

Apprentices, Clause in indentures of,
94, 95.

Argyle's (Duke of) Bill in 1851, 140.

Artificial introduction of salmon.
Reasons for, 223, 224.

Ascent of smolt, Period of, 53.

Ashworth's (Mr.) operations on rais-
ing salmon in Galway, 226.

" Assisted passage" supposed to pro-
mote growth, 50.

Assumptions in books of naturalists,
61.

Atmosphere, Poisoning of, taken cog-
nisance of by law, 212.

Baker's wife and Candide, 59.

" Bar-nets" prohibited at mouth nf

Tweed, 126.
Beauly fisheries affected by fixed en-
gines, 129, 130.
Beauly and Ness, Private Bill for, in

1860, 165 ; period for fi.shing now

allowed, 171.
Beginning of season varies in rivers,

118.
Berners (Dame Julyana), Prioress of

St. Albans, 24.
Berwick, Boxes of salmon sent from,

100.
Bill of 1857 on Tweed fisheries, 153 ;

its main object, 157 ; of 1859, 155.
Bill of 1861. Lord Advocate's, 166 ;

how treated by Select Committee,

167.
Bill of 1861 for England passed, 173.
Bill of 1862, Lord Advocate's, 168,

169.
Bill of 1863 regulating exportation of

salmon, 176.

238

INDEX.

Bills about salmon, Many, but few
Acts, 140.

"Black-fin," 81.

"Black-tails," 70, 71.

Boothia Felix, Value of salmon in, o.

Boundaries, Natural, between estu-
aries and seas, to be fixed by Com-
missioners, 169.

Branlin, Local name of young sal-
mon, 35.

Breeding ponds. Value of, 227.

Breeding (by Mr. Shaw) of parrs from
two salmon, 40.

Brewster (Sir David), on eye of parr
and salmon being of similar forma-
tion, 36.

Brood, name of young salmon north-
ward, 35.

Brora — Francks on export of pickled
salmon, 96.

Brown fish difficult to catch, 153.

Bruce — Acts for the preservation of
salmon in reign of llobert the
Bruce, 136.

Buckland (Frank) on Pisciculture,
referred to, 222.

Buist (Mr. Robert) of Perth, his
services, 52.

Bull-trout and salmon, Difference in
habits of, 127.

Bull-trout of Tweed, 70, 71.

Burt (Captain) on Branlin and " Sal-
mon frye," 35.

on Price of Salmon at Inver-
ness, 92.

Byron (Lord) on Izaak Walton, 24.

Cairn-nets dealt with by Bill of 1857,
154, 159; described, 158.

Canadian Legislature abolish leister-
ing, 163.

Capture of grilse and salmon in Tweed,
annual average for five years, 74. ^

Carlisle, fishery belonging to its Cor-
poration affected by stake-nets,
131.

Carriage, slowness and dearness of,
caused local cheapness, 96.

Causes of decrease of salmon, 114-
133.

Charge of cruelty answered, 19-24.

Charters for sea-coast fisheries all
granted before fixed engines were
thought of, 181 ; the earliest, 183 ;
the latest, 190.

Clean spring salmon, what are they
wanting ? 86.

Cleopatra an angler on the Cydnus,
29.

Close-Season, killing of spawning fish
in, a cause of decrease, 117.

shortening or mistiming of, a

cause of decrease, 117.

on Scotch rivers fixed at May

1864, see Table, p. 235.

in English rivers as fixed by

Act of 1861, 173.
Clyde now depopulated of salmon,

116.
Cod, marked salmon found in stomach

of, 85.
Commissioners, power given to by

Bill of 1862, 169.
Commissioners of Land Revenue,

courses open to, 200.
" Common Fishciries" in Ireland, 8.
Common law of England on salmon

fisheries, 135.
Conon, fisheries on, transferred to

Cromarty Firth, 193.
Coquet, Bull-trout in, 71.
Cost of fish affected by advance of

season, 52.
Costly sport, salmon angling, 15.
Cotton's lines on peaceableness of

anglers, 29.

INDEX.

239

Criminal offence, illegal night fishing
by three or more persons, 172.

Cromarty Firth, fisheries in, 193.

Crown-grants and fixed engines, 180-
185.

Crown-rights in salmon fisheries in
Scotland, 7.

Cruelty of anglers, charge answered,
19-24.

Cruives and yairs, 188.

Cruives on river Ness in olden times,
93.

should be abolished, 195.

Culture of salmon, artificial, now com-
menced, 214.

Cuts, marking by, not to be depended
on, 54.

Davy (Sir Humphry), ardour as an
angler, 28.

on the sea- shore being the

course of the salmon, 123.

estimate of number of ova laid

by salmon, 224.
Decay in supply of salmon, 88.
Decline of salmon in English and

Welsh rivers, evidence in 1860, 98.
Dee and Don fisheries, 9.
Defoe on abundance of salmon

in, 92.

produce affected by erection of

fixed engines, 129.

period for net-fishing now al-
lowed, 171.

Defoe on abundance of salmon in

Scotland, 92, 93.
Dempster of Dunnichen packs salmon

in ice, 4.
Destruction of salmon life in the sea,

84, 85.

in Canadian rivers, 90.

Difference in habits of salmon of

Tweed and tho.se of the Ness, Spey,
Tay, etc., 110.

Difiiculties in investigation of salmon's
history, 32.

Dogmatism on history of salmon, 31.

Doubleday (Thomas) a devoted
angler, 29.

Drainage (Land), Increase of, as af-
fecting salmon, 114-116.

Drink for man, beast, bird, and fish,
rivers intended as, 211.

Dryden an angler, 27.

Dunbar (W.) on ponds on Thurso
river, 227 ; on fixed nets, 194.

Dunninald, Forfjirshire, first stake-
net erected at, 189.

Duration of salmon life reduced by
too much fishing, 105.

Durfey an angler, 27.

ELLENBOROUGit (C. J.), on ancicut

legislation, 135.
Ellice (Mr.) proposes regulation of

fisheries handed over to the Board

of Fisheries, 146.
Employment, means of, 1.

total amount of, 11.

Enemies, — Seals and porpoises sea

enemies of salmon, 194.
Engines on sea-coast affecting supply,
97.

that might be constructed, 229-

232.

England, nature of tenure of salmon-
fisheries in, 7.

law for fisheries pa.ssed in 1861 ,

173, 174.

English, law of .James i., regulating
sale of salmon to, 138.

Equalization in price of sea-fish, 218.

Esk in Cumberland, stake -nets as
affecting fisheries, 130.

240

INDEX.

E.sk (South) in Forfarshire, decrease
of sahnoii in, 116.

Esquimaux, number of salmon eaten
by one, 5.

Expense of working fisheries de-
creased by adoption of recent
Acts, 165.

Export of salmon from Scotland in
olden times, 4.

of pickled salmon in olden

times, 91 ; from Brora, 96.

prohibited at certain times,

176.

Exported salmon, value of, in 1862,

177.
Eye of parr and salmon (jf similar

formation, 36.

Facts about the salmon's history that

are indisputable, 31.
Feeding of young salmon, 49.
Female parrs at one time supposed

to descend first year, and males

the second, 47.
Fenton, lines on Durfey and Dryden,

27. '
Fish made to be eaten, IS.
Fisheries Preservation Association

and Sanitary Association unite in

an address to Lord Palmerston, 205.
Fishermen never charged with cruelty

by objectors to angling, 21.
Fixed engines, how they would have

been treated by Scotch Bill of 1861,

167 ; question still open, 169.
Fixed nets, De.structiveness of, 124,

125, 132.
Floods, Supposed influence of. 49.
Food, Supply of, 1, 12-14, 215-221.
increased by legislative changes,

215.

Salmon taken near the sea best

for, 149.

Forfarshire coast. Stake-nets on, 124.

126.
Forth, Salmon in river, in firmer

days, 92.
Foul fish not to be killed in legal

fishing season, 163.

Exportation of, 177, 178.

France, Pisciculture in, 221, 222.
Francis (Francis) on Pisciculture, re-
ferred to, 222.

Francks (llichard F.) Philanthropu.'^
on names of brood of salmon, 34.

on abundance of salmon in

Scotland, 91, 92.

I »n barbarity of spearing salmon,

161.

Fresh waters, our loss by neglecting

their preservation, 219.
Frightening of fish by stake-nets and

white objects, 132, 133.
Future salmon legislation, 180-213.

Galway, Mr. Ashworth's operations
in, 226.

Game and landed proprietors com-
pared with salmon and fishery pro-
prietors, 149.

Garonne, Salmon in, known to Roman
soldiers, 3.

Gay an angler, 27.

Glasgow, Salmon in heraldic arms
of, 116.

Grant of Crown rights to salmon -
fisheries, 7.

Grayling introduced into Clyde, 223.

Grilse, When smolts become, 54 56 ;
invariably ascend after smolts have
descended, 57.

whether an adolescent salmon

or a distinct fish ? 63.

ascend rivers at a certain perioil,

and then all at once, 64.

INDEX.

241

Grilse of one year are salmon of sub-
sequent years, 75.

and salmon always together,

73 ; distinction between, 80.

G-rilses "never become salmon," an
audacious heresy, 58.

Grilse-kelts, 76 ; marked on descent
and captured on ascent, 83.

Grilse taking, prosperity of, in reports,
what it means, 103.

Habits of salmon of Tweed, Ness,
Spey, and Tay, difference in, 110.

"Half-net" of Solway, 187.

Hall (Rev. James) on salmon-fisheries
about 1805, 94.

on salmon-leistering in Aber-
deenshire, Banff, and Moray, 161,
162.

Hares injure crops, 12.

Health, Salmon -fishing good for, 14.

Henry iii.. Laws of England on salmon
extended to Ireland, 135.

Heraldic arms of Glasgow, Salmon
in, 116.

Highland laird and his gilly in Lon-
don hotel, Story about, 96.

Hind's Labrador, Salmon facts in,
5.

on leistering being prohibited

in Labrador, 163.

Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, on parr

being young salmon, 37.
Home Drummond's Act, 118, 140,

144 ; Tay- fisheries taken out, 164 ;

close-time in, altered, 169.
Home Office, Power of, to extend or

vary close-time in England, 174.
Hume's (Joseph) Bill, 146.
Hunt (Henry) a fly-fisher, 29.
Hunting and shooting have little or

no literature, 28.

Ice, Packing of salmon in, when dis-
covered, 4.

Importance of subject, 1.

Impregnation of female adult salmon
by milt of male parr, 42.

Improvident mercilessness in fishing,
106.

Increase of weight in Grilse, 57.

Inland districts now supplied with
sea-fish, 217, 218.

Inland localities polluting rivers, 206.

Interest of subject, 1-6 ; of public in
preservation of fish, 220.

Insect life preserved by the angler, 23.

Insufficiency of close -time shown, 154.

Inverness, Price of salmon at, in
former times, 92.

Ireland, Nature of tenure of salmon-
fisheries in, 7.

Weight of salmon carried by

three railways in, 12.

Salmon sent from, to London,

97.

Stake and bag nets affecting

salmon in, 130.

Law for fisheries passed in 1862,

175.

James i. of Scotland, Act of, regard-
ing cruives and yairs, 184.
Severe Act of his first Parlia-

ment against fishing in forbidden
times, 136, 137.
Johnson's (Dr.) definition of angler,
18 ; worth of opinion, 25.

" Keep," Salmon cost nothing for, 12,

Keeper and the angler in conversa-
tion, 15.

Kennedy (Ptight Hon. T. F.), Com-
mittee of 1825 presided over by,
146.

Kingdoms of salmon, Great Britain
and Ireland, 4, 5.

Q

242

INDEX.

Kirkcudbright, salmon-fishing in De-
foe's days, 92.

Knife, sahnon obtained for one in
Boothia, 5.

Labour of salmon-fishing to a great

extent labour lost, 11.
Labrador, Salmon in, 89.
Lamb, " cruelty" practised before

getting a leg of lamb, 19.
Legislation on subject, 1 ; preventives

and correctives of, G.
on salmon, 134-179; future,

180-213.

(Modern) proceeds on same

principles as ancient, 140
Leister or spear prohibited by Act of

Parliament, 160 ; its antiquity, 161 ;

prohibited by Canadian Legislature,

163.
Leith, Water of, and sewage, 209, 210.
Lengthening the fishing season, Dis-
astrous effect of, 112.
Lights, Fishing with, prohibited, 172.
Liver (boiled). Young salmon fed on,

49.
Loch (James), Bill of, in 1835, 146.
Locksper, local name of young salmon,

85.
London, Supply sent to, from Irish

fisheries, 97.
London Hotel^ Highland laird and

his gilly at, 96.
Londoners have resolved Thames is

not to be a sewer, 268.
Longfield, " The Fishery Laws of Ire-
laud," 134.
Lord Advocate's Bill of 1861, 166;

withdrawn, 168.

Bill of 1862, 168, 169.

Lower or estuary proprietors, 148 ;

reply of, to upper proprietors, 148.
chiefly want gain, 152.

Lower or estuary proprietors on
Tweed resist abolition of stell and
cairn nets, 159.

Macedonians in ancient times were
anglers, 2.

Mackenzie (Mr.) of Dundonell, his
heresy on grilse never becoming
salmon, 58-60; answer to, 61-84.

Magna Charta, Salmon fisheries re-
cognised and regulated in, 7.

Two clauses in, about salmon,

135.

Male parrs, their premature sexual

maturity, 41-48.
Mansfield (Earl of) examines fish at

Stormontfield, 51.
Marked fish, On capture of, 84.
Marking by cuts not to be depended

on, 54.
Maturity (premature sexual) of male

parr, 41-43.
Mediterranean, no salmon in rivers

falling into, 2.
Meshes of nets restricted in size by

Tweed Bills, 163.

minimum size of, in England,

174.

Migratory dress, when assumed by
parr, 41-53.

Monks formerly improved breeds and
increased produce, 214.

Monteith de Salmonnet, a Scotch-
man, 91.

Moray Firth, Fixed engines in, 129,
130.

fisheries on, made worthless, 201 .

Mottled trout not a parr, 39.
Mysteries in natural history, study
involves, 1.

Name of salmon derived from its leap-
ing powers, 8.

INDEX.

24:

Nations desirous of obtaining salmon, 2.
Nature of rivers varies, 112.
Nature designed rivers not merely

for drains, 211.
Nelson an enthusiast in fishing, 28.
Newby fishery, stake nets as they

afiected, 131.
Ness and Beauly, Private Bill for, in

1860, 165 ; period for net-fishing

now allowed, 171.
Ness, Former abundance of salmon in

river, 92, 93.
Net-and-coble fishing, 120, 122.
Net-fishing on Tweed as treated by

Committee of 1857, 155, 156.

periods for, now allowed, 171.

Net-killing not more humane than

hook-and-line, 22.
Night-leistering on Tweed described,

160 ; on Spey, 162.
Nith, Mr. Shaw's experiments with

parr from, 39 ; on the temperature

of, 48.
Non-legislative remedies, 214-284.
Norlhern Memoirs of R. Francks

quoted, 34.
Norway, Abundance of salmon in, 5.

OBJECTIONS to the angler's sport an-
swered, 18.
Objects of Legislature in all the

Statutes about salmon, 141.
Obstructions on rivers as affecting

salmon, 116.
of fishing rivers, how treated by

English Act of 1861, 173.
" Old soldiers" not to be caught, 153.
" Orange-fin" or smolt of bull-trout,

81.
Ova of salmon only produce parrs,

40.
Over- fishing, great cause of decrease

in salmon, 120.

Pairing of grilse and salmon, On, 81 ;

experiment at Stormontfield, 82.
Paley's enthusiasm as a fly -fisher, 28.
Paris market, Foul salmon smuggled

into, 178.
Parliamentary returns, 8, 9.
Parr, the infant young of salmon, 34.
never breed nor have developed

— age when it assumes appearance
and habits of smolt, 40.

— premature sexual maturity of
male, 41-43.

— two-years'

theory regarding

migration, 44-52.

descent of female and male, 47.

Paterson (James), Treatise on Fishery

Laws of United Kingdom, 131.
Paulin (Mr. William) of Berwick, his

doubts and objections, 56.
Peaceableness of anglers, 29.
Peel's (Sir Robert) remark on salmon

bills, 140.
Penk, name of young salmon in East

of England, 35.
Perils to which salmon are liable from

earliest stages, 224.
Period required to hatch ova of salmon,

41.
Perth, salmon-fishery at, in former

times, 93.
Pheasants and partridges injure crops,

12.
Pickled salmon, export of, in olden

times, 91 ; from Brora, 96.
Pisciculture in France, 221 ; applied

to salmon, 227.
Plenty of olden times was partial or

local, 88.
Pliny on salmon, 4.
Poacher's time for taking salmon,

152 ; takes the worst fish, 153.
Poaching on Tweed diminished, 157.

244

INDEX.

Poets' (British) allusions to angling,
25-27.

"Poke-net" of Solway, 187.

Pollutions in rivers as affecting sal-
mon, 116.

legislation for, 201.

■ how far prevented in England

by Act of 1861, 173.

Polwarth's (Lord) expression on
salmon being over-fished, 14.

Ponds, Mr. Shaw's experiments in,
39 ; stimulating effects of, 50.

Pope on fish and angling, 27.

Populating rivers with fish, 222.

Poyning's law, 136.

" Prescription " for the use of fixed
engines, how to be treated, 189.

Prices, Rise of, 13.

of food not diminished, 216.

Produce increased by adoption of
recent Acts, 165.

Productiveness of water, 221.

Property in salmon-fisheries ancient,
valuable, and marketable, 6, 10.

fixed engines as, 180.

in fisheries not at owner's dis-
posal to make the best of, 142.

Protection of salmon in Tay, 109-111.

Public, interest of in salmon supply
being cared for, 13.

Purification of rivers and preserva-
tion of fish, 202.

Putt, what it was, 158.

Quarter- SESSIONS, power of extend-
ing or varying close- time in Eng-
land, 174.

Queensferry, Salmon fishery at, 94.

Questions about salmon, 33.

Quietness of anglers, 29.

Rabbit-warrener and sahnon-fisher
compared, 230.

Railway system as affecting pollution

of rivers, 206.
Railways now carry sea-fish to inland

districts, 217.
" Raise-net" of Solway, 188.
Ramsbottom (Mr.), experiments at

DoohuUa, in G-alway, 46-56.
Range, great in size of salmon, small

in size of grilse, 78.
Ray and Willoughby quoted, 48.
Redd, Fish on, does not take the lure,

152.
Redgauntlet, allusions to fixed nets in

Solway in, 187, 188.
Reformation, Acts about salmon after,

138.
Reformation may be wrought, 228.
Remedies, non-legislative, 214 234.
Rental of fisheries on Tweed, 99-107.

on Tay, 107-112.

of Tay begins to rise when

season for fishing is shortened, 113.
Resistance by hooked fish no proof of

suffering, 23.
Retrenchment, how to be introduced,

209-234.
Revenue (recovered) from titles to

sea-fishing in Scotland, 199.
Rhone, Sir Humphry Davy on

angling in the, 28.
Richard ii., Acts of, in force till 1861,

135.
Richardson on Arctic salmon, 5.
Richmond's (Duke of) fisheries on

Spey, value of, 9.
Right of proprietors to use fixed

engines, question treated, 181.
Rigour of old Scottish Statutes, 186.
Rings, Smolts marked by, 55.
River-courses, are they only natural

drains? 211.
Rivers, are they to be transformed

into common sewers ? 205, 207.

{

INDEX.

245

Rod, Fish spawning not to be taken
by, 152.

Rod-fishing and the proprietors of
salmon-fisheries, 143.

on Tweed as dealt with by Com-
mittee of 1857, 155-156.

period for, now allowed, 171.

in English rivers, 174.

Roe of salmon, Prohibition of sale and
use of, 172.

Roman soldiers in Britain eating sal-
mon, 3.

Romans' demand for salmon, 4.

Ross (Sir John) on value of salmon
in Boothia, 5.

liossii (Salmo), 5.

Ross-shire laird on grilse never be-
coming salmon, 58.

Roxburghe (Duke of) has a grilse
which was marked when a smolt,
6.

gratitude due to, by anglers and

owners of fisheries, 147; his labours,
154, 155.

Salmo eriox^ or bull-trout, 71 ; large
proportion of, on Tweed, 87.

Salmo Rossi i, 5.

Salmo salar, or common salmon, 31-
87.

Salmon ascend rivers eveiy month of
the year, 68.

and grilse always together, 73.

Saltatory motions of salmon origin of
specific name, 3.

Salted salmon, export of, from Scot-
land, 4.

Samlet, name of young salmon in
south, 34.

Sanitary Associations unite with Fish-
eries Preservation Association in
an address to Lord Palmerston,
205.

Saw-dust noxious to fish in rivers, 203.
Scotland exporting in olden times, 4.
nature of tenure of salmon

fisheries in, 7.
Scotch minister and the ploughman,

62.
fisheries regulated by Lord

Advocate's Bill of 1862, 168.

subject, salmon a, 1.

Statutes (ancient), 136.

Scott's (Sir Walter) term for upper

proprietors, 151.
Scrope's Letter to Right Hon. T. F.

Kennedy, M.P., on parr being

young of salmon, 36.
Sea, Grilse grow in size and weight

in ; salmon taken near, best for

food, 149.
Sea-coast, the course of the salmon,

123, 124.
fishery in Scotland, as granted

by Crown, 198.
Sea-fish carried by railways into in-
land districts, 217.
Semi-domestic rearing of salmon, 224.
Severity of old Scottish law, 136, 137.
Sewage (town) not always fatal to

fish, 203.
Sewers, are rivers to become common

sewers ? 205-207.
Sexual maturity of male parrs, 41-43.
Shakspeare's allusions to angling, 26.
Shaw (Mr.), head-keeper to the Duke

of Buccleuch at Drumlanrig Castle,

experiments on young salmon, 37-

43.
Sheep drains, how they aff'ect ascent

of salmon, 114.
Shin, in Sutherlandshire, why many

grilse are not caught there other-
wise than by angling, 72.
Shortening the fishing season on Tay,

good effect of, 113.

246

INDEX.

Silver wire, Tweed smolts marked by
means of, 55.

Skegger, name of young salmon in
west, 35.

Smollet on fish in his " Ode to Leven
Water," 27.

Smolt, Age when parr passes into, 40,
41-53.

■ marking of, 54 ; time when

they return as grilse, 56.

Solway, close season in, 117 ; stake-
nets on Scotch shores of, 130.

Scotch, when at war with Eng-
lish, might fish at any time in
waters of, 137, 138.

in olden time left unprotected

by law, 186
Spawning fish. Killing of, a cause of

decrease, 117.
Spear or leister prohibited by Act of

Parliament, 160.
Spenser's allusions, etc., to angling,

25, 26.
Spey fisheries. Value of, 9 ; produce

of, 12 ; value of, about 1805, 94.

Produce of nine years' fisheries

on, 106.

fixed engines at mouth of, 129.

period for net fishing now al-
lowed, 171.

Sport, Old and keenly relished, 1 ;
salmon good for, 14.

Stake and bag net fishing as affecting
decrease, 121-129.

prohibited in England, 174.

first erected on shore of sea,

189.

Standing-nets take few sea- trout, 105.
Statistics, On reasoning from, 97, 98 ;

of Scottish fisheries, 99.
Stell-nets dealt with by Tweed Bill

of 1857, 154, 159 ; described, 157.
Stewart (P. M.) Bill of, in 1835, 146.

Stiifness in opinion of the elder

anglers, 37.
Stimulating effects of ponds on breed-
ing of salmon, 50.
Stirling — Statutes formerly enforced

at, about eating salmon, 92.
Stoddart (Mr. Thomas) quoted, 50.
Stormontfieldon the Tay, experimental

and breeding ponds, 40 ; raising of

fish at, 225.
St. Lawrence, Salmon in, 89, 90.
Suggestion to omniscient authors and

witnesses, 33.
Supply of salmon, decay in, 88-133.
affected by fixed engines on

sea-coast, 97.
Sutherland, bag-nets on north-west

coast, 129.

Tay Fisheries, 9 ; produce of, 12.

rental of fisheries in river and

firth of, 107-112.

nature of its bed for fishing,

109.

improvement on laws and

management affecting fisheries,
112.

Navigation Act, 121, 122.

proprietors get a local Act in

1858, 164.

period for net-fishing now al-
lowed, 171.

Tecon, local name of young salmon,
35.

Temperature of Nith and ponds com-
pared, 49.

Tenure of salmon- fisheries as pro-
perty, 6, 7.

Thames now utterly depopulated of
salmon, 116.

is no longer to be a sewer, 208.

Tlieories about parr and salmon, 37.

INDEX.

247

Thoinsou's (of Bnnchory) proposal to

Dee proprietors, 233.
Thurso, private Bill iu 1860 for river,

105.

artificial ponds on, 227.

Tidal waters, right of fishing in, 7.
Title, 345 persons fishing on Scotch

sea-coast without, 199.

Towns on rivers pollute water, 209.

" Travelling condition," period of, in
Scotland, 114.

Trout, ascent of trout in the Tweed,
68 ; time of spawning, 69 ; bull-
trout of, 71.

" Trout" of Tweed reports is Salmo
eriox, 129.

Tumults in Ireland caused by intro-
duction of stake and bag nets, 180.

Tweed, experiments on smolts in,
66.

proportions of salmon, grilse,

and trout taken in net-fisheries,
65.

rental of fisheries on, 99-107.

nature of its bed for fishing,

1 09 ; salmon in regarded as spoil,
111.

long and late fishing on, 118 ;

Act prohibits "bar-nets," 126.

— Scotch when at war with Eng-
lish might fish at any time in, 137,
138 ; close-time on, 154.

differing from other rivers as a

salmon range, 156.

— stake and bag nets on, not abo-
lished by Bill of 1859, 160.

— woollen manufactories affecting

purity of, 207.

salmon, chances of a, 230.

Two-years' theory regarding migra-
tion of parr, 44, 52.

Tyne, Salmon in, much reduced in
numbers, 116.

Uniform machinery only must be
employed, 142.

Upper proprietors. Victories of, 143 ;
interests of them and lower pro-
prietors identical, 147.

chiefly want sport, 151.

Value of salmon fisheries in Ireland,
8 ; in Scotland, 9.

average) to upper and lower

proprietors, 152.
Vegetarians on cruelty, 19.
Voluntary closing of fishing season,

145.

Wallace of Kelly, Bill stopping net-
fishing on 24th August, 146.

Walton (Izaak) a good man, 24.

on experiments made in his

days on young salmon, 35 ; knew
parrs were only found in salmon
rivers, 38 ; erroneous observation
when salmon are best, 149.

Water more productive than land,
221.

Water of Leith and sewage, 209, 210.

Water-poaching on Tweed, 111.

Weavers of Hawick, Selkirk, and
Galashiels, water-poachers. 111.

Weddel (Robert) on the stell-net, 157.

Weekly close-time as now extended,
171.

Weight of grilse. Increase in, 57.

in different months, 75 ; argu-
ment from weight, 79.

Westbury (Lord Chancellor) on prin-
ciples of salmon legislation, 141.

Wharfe (river), in Yorkshire, Experi-
ments on salmon in, 47.

Whitadder, Kelts marked at mouth
of, 84.

Wholesome, When salmon are most,
149.

248

INDEX.

Wilson (Mr. James) examines fish at

Stormontfield, 51.
article in Blackwood on

"What's a Parr?" 62.

article " Ichthyology," in En-

cyclopcedia Britannica, 62.

on early killing of salmon, 104.

Women sometimes keen anglers,
29.

Woollen manufactories on Tweed pol-
lute water, 207.

Wordsworth fond of fly-fishing and

fly-fishermen, 27.

Yairs and cruives, 183.

Year when parr migrates, 43-53.

Young of Invershin on parr as " river-
trout," 38.

on parr descending shortly after

expiry of first year, 46.

Ythan in Aberdeenshire, Rev. James
Hall's story of two proprietors, 4%:

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OPINIONS OF THE PRESS IN 1864.

PAGE

COURANT . . 1

SCOTSMAN \ . . 3

SUN .... 3

SATURDAY REVIEW 4

TIMES, . . 5

Prom THE EDINBURGH COURANT, September 3, 1864.

The Nokth British Eeview. No. LXXXI. — The histoiy of
the JVorth British Review since its commencement in 1844 is to
some extent the history of religious thought in Scotland during
the same period. Originally started by Dr. Chalmers to repre-
sent and vindicate that enlightened Christianity which the
Edinhurgh Reviciv had always regarded somewhat distantly, it
was far from being in any sense a "religious organ" or tram-
melled by the tenets of any particular sect. Indeed, it is well
known that among the writers whom its illustrious founder was
most anxious to secure as contributors to its pages were Mr.
Thomas Carlyle and Mr. J. D. Morell. Under the congenial
editorship of Dr. Ilanna and Professor Eraser the North British
Review carried out to the utmost limit the programme of its
founder. Eeligious questions were discussed with a freshness

2 The Courant I^ewspaper on

and power which were never hampered by timidity, and were
never wanting in the reverential spirit. Writers of the highest
mark contributed articles in their happiest style. Stanley
Conington, Isaac Taylor, Herbert Spencer, Kingsley, Freeman,
Mansel, Senior, De Morgan, are a few among many names which
gave it a wide and authoritative circulation, not only among all
religious parties in Scotland, but even in England and the
Colonies. The very breadth and freedom of its style of discus-
sion, however, gave offence to the less scholarly and philosophi-
cal adherents of that sect of which Dr. Chalmers had been the
acknowledged leader ; and, accordingly, some seven years ago,
a change was effected in its management, by which it assumed
a character more congenial to what is called (rightly or
wrongly) the " evangelical" party in the religious world. Im-
mediately, in almost every department of literature, philosophy,
and science, it betrayed a falling off; less than four years suf-
ficed to divest it of nearly all the charm and authority it
formerly had for its numerous readers at home and abroad ; till
at length, in 1861, it had again to undergo a change of manage
ment. This change was made in conformity with the growth
of a more liberal spirit even among the sect which had weU-
nigh wrought its ruin ; and, accordingly, the style of its articles
on religious subjects came to be marked by a more genial and
scholarly tone than it had been conscious of since 1857. Still,
there was great room for further improvement ; and the Reviciv
has once more been transferred to a new management, which,
we hope, and indeed expect, will at length be the final one.
Under its present auspices, the North British Review has swung
round as nearly as possible to the point from which, twenty
years ago, it was first projected. On the whole, its style ex-
hibits the same manliness and freedom which are characteristic
of everything charged with the genuine spirit of its founder ;
and although its recent numbers have contained articles some-
times provincial in tone, sometimes even vulgar in conception
and treatment, still these are faults which are gradually dis-
appearing from its pages in proportion as its contributors are
selected from a less and less local area.

" Wordsworth : the Man and the Poet" is incomparably the
best article in the present number ; and its conclusions may be
accepted as those of the most competent and refined critics of

The North British Review. 3

the author of the " Excursion." It is the ablest contribution to
the apparatus criticus of the poet since Henry Taylor's cele-
brated article, the publication of which, thirty years ago, in
the Quarterly Bcviciv, marks the point at which the hostility
of Jeffrey and his school was silenced for ever.

Prom THE SCOTSMAN, June 2, 1864.

No. LXXX. — AVith topics fresh and interesting, and able
writers, obviously left, as such writers ought to be left, to the
freedom of their own thoughts and styles, this is an admii'able
number of the North British, and would be an admirable number
of any of the Quarterlies of older fame and once of richer re-
sources. Especially, it is pleasant to perceive that there is no
chance of the North British dying of dignity — a malady which
has brought one, at least, of its brethren into a somnolent, if not
a moribund, condition. It is not content and proud to dwell
either in decencies or in dulnesses for ever ; and when it can
set forth good sense or sound learning with humour or wit, or
even " fun," it is neither ashamed nor afraid to make sport for
its readers. Something like a combined effort has been made
of late years to convince the " reading public" that dulness is
an equivalent of wisdom, and that, as Quarterlies are the
natural, if not sole repositories of wisdom, they fulfil the pur-
pose of their being in filling themselves with dulness. It was
not so in the earlier and better days of Quarterlyism, when
Sydney Smith joked wisely and Lockhart jeered too well ; and
a little retrogression in this matter would be better than the
sort of progress we have been lately making.

A very good instance of how not only buoyant but royster-
ing humour can be united with solid facts and wise instruction,
is supplied by the article called " A Fortnight in Faroe." The
writer has new and strange things to tell, and he tells them
well — fine scenes to paint, and he paints them with a vigorous
brush ; but he is in violent animal spirits all the while, enjoy-
ing his work immensely, and giving you a chance of enjoying
it too, a chance all the more likely to be accepted that he ob-
viously does not care whether you take it or leave it.

4 The Saturday Revieiv on

From THE SUN, February 20, 1864.

Although several articles of importance lend an especial
interest to the current number of the North British Review — •
conspicuous among them a reverential treatise upon the " Vie
de Jesus," such as will hardly satisfy the egotism of M. Eenan
should it fall under his observation — we have turned, as we
conjecture every person taking up this ever welcome blue-
covered northern Quarterly will turn, must perforce turn, in-
stinctively, inevitably, to the last paper of all — the eighth —
simply entitled " Thackeray." Of all the many memorials of
Thackeray yet given to the eager multitude of his lamenting
admirers since his startling demise, this paper in the North
British is, to our mind, incomparably the very best.

From THE SATURDAY REVIEW, August 20, 1864.

" Salt of Society." — A slight sketch of the private life
of Lord Elgin, written with great feeling and excellent taste,
has lately been published in the North British Revieiv. The
writer only gives an outline of Lord Elgin's public career, and
leaves it to others to paint the varied scenes of diplomatic life
through which the late Governor-General passed in his career
of labour and enterprise. Some day the narrative of this career
will be written, and if it is but well done, it ought to be full of
interest and instruction. It is of Lord Elgin as he was known
to his family and familiar friends that the article in the North
British Review treats ; more especially it gives a record of his
last days, after the fatal disease which terminated his life had
displayed itself, and while he was waiting for his release. He
ended his days as a sober, courageous, religious man should end
them, devoted in his affection to all around him, anxious to
lessen their sorrow, forgetful of himself, and resigned to the
will of God.

From THE SATURDAY REVIEW, October 22, 1864.

"The Two Sides of Criticism." — As a specimen of sympathetic
criticism, we may take the elaborate and admirable criticism
of " Wordsworth," which has lately appeared in the pages of the

The North British Review.

North British Review, and which gives in a moderate compass
all that an ardent and yet sensible admirer of Wordsworth has
to say about his favourite poet. ... On the whole, this
essay is one of the best specimens of sympathetic criticism that
can easily be found, and has much that is new and delightful
in it even to very old readers of Wordsworth. We get a very
different, and a much fuller and truer notion of Wordsworth
from it than that which Lord Jeffrey gives us, but the two
together give a juster notion than either separately.

From THE TIMES.

It is not often that we step out of our way to review a Review,
but the present occasion encourages the experiment, and many
of our readers will thank us for pointing to the rise of a new
luminary. The first star of this series arose in a northern
latitude, when the last generation rejoiced in the beams of
the old Editiburgh. Why do such reviews pale and degenerate
when they come into southern lands ? Have we still lessons
to learn from the brood of the " caller air ?" Is there strange
virtue in oat-cake, — or what is the secret ? The fact is that
the northern " wut" is combined with a canny sense of the
necessities of our state, and with a strong impulse to positive
progress. Thus Logarithms and Steam-Engines and Wealth of
Nations have come out of strenuous Scottish brains, and we
witness now a new phenomenon in a fresh development of
their critical power. Of course, we are not vain enough to
ascribe their superiority to the fact that possibly they avail
themselves more freely than formerly of the products of English
contributors. At all events, we hall the recent numbers of the
North British as a sign of their advance, and a proof that a
true Scot is as ready as ever to cross the Tweed and to vie
successfully with his English competitors. It is seldom, if ever,
that one sees so good a series of reviews — so good substantially
in nearly all their articles, from the first page to the last. It
is sensible on all its subjects, as distinguished from literary
persiflage, — a true whistle from the oaten straw which it is
ever bracing to our nerves to hearken to.

CONTENTS OF Nos. LXXVIIL to LXXXIL

No. LXXVIII.

1. On the Ancient Glaciers and Icebergs

of Scotland.

2. The Seafoi-th Papers.

3. On Recent Geographical Discovery and

Research.

4. Pet Marjorie.

5. Clerical Subscription in the Church of

England.

6. A Voyage to Alexandria and a Glimpse

of Egypt.

7. The Scotch Universities' Commission.

8. Northern Studies— Harold Hardrada

and Magnus the Good.

9. England and Europe.

No. LXXIX.

1. The Country Life of England.

2. The Dynamical Theory of Heat.

3. " Bibliomania."

4. Harold Hardrada, King of Norway.

5. The later Roman Epic — Statins' Thebaid,

6. Kilmahoe : a Highland Pastoral.

7. Renan — " Vie de Jesus."

8. Thackeray.

No. LXXX.

1. Lord Elgin — Tn Memoriam.

2. A Fortnight in Faroe.

3. Energy.

4. Mr. Trollope's Novels.

5. Day Dreams of a Schoolmaster.

6. Christian Missions.

7. The Old Anglo-Scottish Dialect.

8. Rambles in the Deserts of Syria.

9. Sporting Boolcs.
10. Our Foreign Policy.

No. LXXXI.

1. Wordsworth : the Man and the Poet.

2. Todlel>en's History of the Crimean

War.

3. Ne\vman's Apologia pro Vita Sua.

4. Education at Public Schools.

5. Russia under Alexander ii.

6. The Scotch Lawyer of the Seventeenth

Century.

7. Berkeley's Theory of Vision.

8. Tennyson's Enoch Arden, etc.

No. LXXXII.

1 . Commercial Philanthropy.

2. Latham's Johnson's Dictionary.

3. Liturgical Reform in the Church of

England.

4. Early Roman Tragedy and Epic Poetiy

5. Wildbad and its Water.

6. Giuseppe Giusti and his Times.

7. The late John Richardson.

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style that everybody will read with pleasure.

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it egotism ; but the term would be apt to mislead, for it is that natural, unconscious
egotism, which springs from honest earnestness of character, and is therefore void of
offence. We have said so much to indicate the general character of the work. Educa-
tion, in all its aspects and phases, is its subject ; but it does not belong to educational
literature merely. It takes a much wider range, and deserves a much higher place.
At times you think you are reading an autobiography ; at others, a history of school
systems; at others, a philosophy of education. The manner in which these various
elements are blended renders the book a remarkable one. It is a book to be read by
parents fully as much as by schoolmasters. It is full of sound sense and originality ;
and there is nothing more original in it than its vein of poetic sentiment, and its telling
touches of caustic humour," — Museum.

Edinburgh : EDMONSTON & DOUGLAS, 88, Princes Street.

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