236 Salmon Fisheries of Great Britain. [MARCH, 



cepted ; for the fishers cannot distinguish the good from the bad in the 

 water ; and, notwithstanding all professions to the contrary, all are fish 

 that come to their net. The red-fish, again, when seeking the upper 

 streams for spawning, take the mid-channel. The number taken by the 

 stake-net is inconsiderable ; whilst the river-net and the weir take all 

 for this machinery stretches across from bank to bank. 



Any person, therefore, taking a dispassionate view of the subject- 

 first investigating the habits and character of the salmon would come 

 to these safe and important conclusions: That the salmon is a sea-fish, 

 and only in the salt water is in a sound state that it frequents the rivers 

 for reproducing that there, therefore, it ought to be protected pro- 

 tected, or otherwise the species is destroyed in the source of its being- 

 that, consequently, fishing in the fresh waters altogether should be 

 declared illegal, as well for the protection of the breed, as the health of 

 .the lieges and, finally, fishing on the coasts and the mouths of rivers 

 should be exclusively legalized. But as laws are generally better gra- 

 dually corrected, in the opinion of most men of practical men espe- 

 cially, as the phrase is than precipitately annulled, let the existing laws, 

 which regulate the close and open seasons for fishing, be made general - 

 the same for every part of the kingdom and so fixed, as to leave the 

 fish free to come up the streams, and to go down again and the fry, in 

 like manner, undisturbed in its descent \ let these limits be fixed from 

 the end of April to the beginning of September with full liberty to the 

 stake-net to operate whenever it can do so with advantage, and no where 

 else will it of course be used. The open season for the coasts might be 

 safely extended : for there the fishers will interfere neither with fry nor 

 kelt in the former season, nor with the spawners in the latter : these all 

 keep the mid- water, and the spawners, when ripe, have fled up the 

 streams. 



Be these things done, and the produce of the salmon-fisheries must be 

 immensely augmented. To Ireland to a potatoe-fed and a Catholic popu- 

 lation the advantage of a cheap supply of fish must be important. The 

 pigs will no longer feed upon the fry ; but, en revanche, the owners of the 

 pigs may feed upon the full-grown salmon. The monopoly of the 

 Limerick Corporation might also be broken up even if it broke up the 

 Corporation itself, and all other rotten bodies through the kingdom. 

 They possess a permanent weir, in which the law of the Shannon requires 

 three gaps or openings, to allow the salmon to pass upwards. Some 

 few years ago, the renters shut up these gaps, and took every fish not one 

 could escape to the higher grounds ; and at last, when these gaps were 

 again thrown open, by a decree of the courts, the Corporation or their 

 representatives placed in the front of them a painted crocodile, with open 

 jaws, in glaring colours, to frighten the salmon. Whether the salmon 

 were thus frightened or not, is not material the animus of the projector 

 is obvious. Nor would the advantage, thus great to Ireland, be slight to 

 England : our new regulations, by checking poaching, might mend, or 

 at least not tend to deteriorate, the morals of the people ; and, at all 

 events, stake-nets introduced on the coasts round the whole island would 

 furnish employment for thousands of starving people. But the great 

 and paramount advantage is the adding to the stock of subsistence, the 

 augmenting the amount of the eatable matter, and bringing within the 

 reach of the poor and the lowly what is now enjoyed and exulted in as 

 exclusively the food of the rich and mighty. 



