194 



SALMON. 



that for several centuries, claimed and allowed to the Abbot of 

 St. Peters in Westminster, on the plea that when Saint Peter, 

 according to the legend, had come and consecrated that church, 

 he made a grant to the convent of the tithe of all the Salmon 

 caught in the Thames, to the same extent as the present juris- 

 diction of the Lord Mayor; which is from Yantlett creek to 

 the bridge at Staines; and among the many causes that have 

 been assigned for the scarcity of Salmon in the Thames in more 

 modern times, not the least of them was believed to be, that 

 the fishermen had left off making this accustomed offering. A 

 cause not altogether unlike the above has also been assigned by 

 Dr. Boate, in his "Natural History of Ireland," for the diminished 

 quantity of Salmon in that country. He says that before the 

 Revolution in the year 1688, this fish was plentiful and cheap; 

 but since that event, to which this author ascribes all the natural 

 calamities of his count)y, gentlemen have complained that Salmon 

 had become scarce and dear; but he does not add that the 

 fishermen complained of not obtaining greater success or better 

 remuneration. 



That in the reign of Elizabeth a Salmon at table was 

 accounted a matter of fashion, in which a person of ordinary 

 rank might be tempted to ape the rich and the great, appears 

 ffom a scene in the tragedy of '^'Othello," although it seems 

 incongruous to place the reference in the mouth of one to 

 Avhom the fish could scarcely have been known; but it is 

 represented as an instance of good sense in a woman, that in 

 her wisdom she was never so frail as to change the more 

 useful although homely Cod's head at her table for the tail 

 of the fashionable Salmon. But the price of Salmon rose 

 gradually in different parts of the kingdom, and with it the 

 rents of the larger fisheries in the north of England and Scot- 

 land, until the latter have amounted to a princely income. So 

 long since as about the year 1730, I find in a MS. Journal 

 that in the market at Plymouth two pounds of Salmon and 

 fifty shrimps (prawns) were purchased at the cost of six shillings; 

 but as a contrast to this, I find in the same Journal, with the 

 date of 1761, "The Saltash fishermen, with two nets, catch'd 

 eighty-five Salmon over against Warren Point; forty- five in 

 one net and forty in the other; they may not have such 

 another draught lor the whole summer. For two of these 



