72 PHYSOSTOMI. 



century since to what obtains at the present time, because so many disturbing 

 influences have occurred. And due to temporary large hauls a local super- 

 abundance of salmon must have occurred along the banks of some of our 

 best fishing streams, while want of carriage precluded their being distributed 

 throughout the country in ways now practicable, due to steamers, railways, 

 improved roads and modes of carriage. Thus in or near seaports, as Berwick, 

 Pennant, writing in 1776, informs us that the Tweed fish were sent fresh to 

 London in baskets by sailing vessels, unless the craft was disappointed by 

 contrary winds, when they were relanded, boiled, pickled and kitted and so 

 dispatched, while other fresh ones replaced them in the baskets. At the com- 

 mencement of the season, when a ship was on the point of sailing, a fresh, clean 

 salmon would sell from Is to Is 6d a pound, and the price at such periods was 

 from 5s to 9s a stone of 18 lb. 10| oz. weight, but the value rose and fell 

 according to the plenty or paucity of fish and the prospect of a fair or a foul 

 wind. In the month of July, when they were said to be more plentiful, the cost 

 has been known to be as low as 8d per stone, but in 1775 never less than Is 4cZ 

 and from that to 2s 6d. While to pay the expenses of the salmon fisheries, 

 Pennant estimated it would be necessary to capture 208,000 fish annually. 

 About 1780 a Scotch Laird called Dempster of Dunnichen discovered that 

 salmon packed in ice could be conveyed long distances and in good condition. 



Legislation. From time to time laws have been enacted in order to secure a 

 free passage for breeding salmon from the sea to their spawning-beds, and a safe 

 descent from thence when unfit for food or too small for consumption. Also for 

 the purpose of prohibiting any individual riparian proprietor from increasing the 

 efficiency of his methods of capture to the injury of his neighbour or that of the 

 general interest. For rivers only hold a supply to a limited amount, and should 

 a disproportionate capture be made at one spot among the migratory shoals, this 

 unduly diminishes the share which would otherwise accrue to the owners of 

 fisheries in the upper waters. It has therefore been held that each fishery is 

 merely entitled to its share of the general supply. From this fair division, as 

 I shall have to show, the stationary net-fishers along the foreshores of Scotland, 

 although of comparatively recent erection, have somehow managed to obtain 

 exemption, and those structures, never, I believe, legalized, are employed to the 

 detriment of the river fisheries, and doubtless at some future date will have to be 

 placed under stringent regulations or prohibited as nuisances, as have been those 

 in rivers and estuaries which existed for centuries. 



The many phases through which salmon legislation in the British Isles has 

 passed would for its due record require volumes for its full and clear explanation. 

 At first the primary consideration appears to have been the good of the fisheries, 

 and devices injuriously affecting them were in the earliest periods of English law 

 reprobated as public nuisances. Especial attention was drawn in Magna Charta 

 to how the Crown had attempted to disregard these laws, and permitted certain 

 individuals to set up cruives or weirs, and it was enacted that " all weirs from 

 henceforth shall be utterly put down by Thames and Medway, and through all 

 England, except the sea-coast." What this exception referred to is now a mystery, 

 as no fixed engines existed along the sea-coast in those times. We find especial 

 enactments subsequently in the English statutes respecting allowing salmon a close 

 time. The 13th Edward IV, cap. 47, prohibited the taking of salmon from the 

 Nativity of Our Lady (September 8th), until St. Martin's Day (November 12th), 

 in the Humber, Ouse, Trent, Done, Arre, Derwent, Wharfe, Nid, Yore, Swale and 

 Tees. And in an Act of 1861, polluting and poisoning of rivers, and the use of 

 lights and spears, was prohibited : fixed engines were declared public nuisances, 

 and abolished, unless an ancient right to such prior to Magna Charta could be 

 shown, and even then dams and weirs were directed to possess serviceable fish-passes 

 or gaps : the mesh of all nets was restricted to 2 inches between knot and knot of 

 the mesh, and placing gratings across side streams was declared illegal. Unclean 

 spawning and young fish were to be protected, and an annual close-time was 

 imposed generally in England between September 1st and February 6th inclusive 

 with nets, or by angling to November 1st, these times being susceptible of alteration 



