234 Salmon Fisheries of' Great Britain. MARCH, 



again, caught by the stake-net is of the better quality. The salmon, as we have 

 before said, is a sea-fish the sea is its home; it frequents rivers for spawning 

 only; it feeds in the sea rarely is any thing found in its stomach in the 

 rivers and, caught in the sea, it is always richer, firmer, sounder, than in 

 the rivers. The stake-net, again, may be used on any part of the coast 

 not merely at the mouths of rivers ; for the fact is notorious that the coasts 

 in every quarter teem with salmon ; and, wherever the net has been used, 

 it has been successful. Fish thus taken, moreover, are a direct gain to 

 the public. They are not fish that would necessarily go up the rivers, 

 and be taken by the weir or the seine ; but, in reality, are rescued from 

 the sea, and plucked from the jaws of the grampus and the seal. It has 

 been, indeed, objected to this instrument, that it is calculated only to 

 ruin the river fishers to intercept what must otherwise, first or last, have 

 been caught by them. But the fact is evidently very different ; for in 

 the rivers, at the mouths of which stake-nets have been used, the old 

 fishers have actually not caught less than before : therefore, what the 

 stake-net takes must be chiefly those which the others could not. The 

 river fishers choose to assert that the fish which are seen along the shores 

 are always seeking the rivers; but the fact is indisputable, that salmon 

 float on the tide, and go up and down with it ; for as many are caught 

 on the ebb as on the flow. The salmon again are found in parts of the 

 coast far away from the mouths of rivers, and evidently not seeking 

 rivers ; and those which frequent the flat sands do so probably for the 

 purpose of feeding, and not of scenting for rivers because, if the fish 

 were coasting along shore for the sole purpose of seeking the rivers, 

 the extreme nets the nets nearest the coast would take the most ; but 

 one of the witnesses expressly states, that of twelve nets which he has, all 

 adjoining each other, and between the mouths of rivers, the nets in the 

 centre take as many as those at the extremities. But, farther, at the very 

 time when salmon appear in the greatest abundance, the rivers, many of 

 them, are in no state to receive them. The larger rivers are, of course ; 

 but the greater part of the smaller ones are not the Esk, for instance. 

 The lessee states, that he used a stake-net very successfully at the mouth 

 of that river, when there was no water in the bed of the river itself. 



In short, the evidence from friends and foes, on the whole, very 

 decidedly goes to shew that the rivers have never been injured by the 

 stake-nets that ' in cases where the produce of particular rivers has 

 failed, other causes have been at work ; and the proprietors of rivers 

 are themselves the best able to account for the failure, because they are 

 themselves the agents of destruction ; and that, as to the fish taken by 

 the stake-net, in places where the weir and the seine cannot operate, it is 

 not the river proprietors who suffer, but the grampuses, porpoises, and 

 seals. The evidence is full and indisputable, that wherever the salmon 

 abounds, these fish of prey abound. Hundreds and hundreds are con- 

 stantly seen in the Tay and the Shannon. The salmon caught by man is 

 perfectly insignificant compared with the quantity devoured by these, 

 its natural enemies. The opinion of the fishers is, they live wholly on 

 salmon ; they never saw any other fish taken out of their stomachs. 

 Wherever the stake-net has been in activity, their numbers are much 

 lessened, and re-appear when the net has been removed. Where por- 

 poises are plentiful, the fishers are sure of a draught of salmon. The 

 devastation of these animals must be prodigious ; several have been taken 

 out of one seal, and one porpoise more or less digested, and some sa 



