the Salmon, Herring, and Vendace. 495 



fluence of stake-nets against " the interests of the upper heritors " of fishings, cannot 

 even be imagined, in respect to the Columbia, by the most fantastic mind. 



2dly, When salmon abounded in the remote districts of Scotland and Ireland as an 

 article of food, the value of th& London market had not been discovered, or, if known, 

 could not be reached ; steam conveyance and the use of ice were unknown ; "the accu- 

 mulation of wealth in London, and in the empire generally ; the vast increase to our 

 population, did not exist. The use of grouse and venison, and claret, as articles of food, 

 were perhaps once as familiar to the lower as to the wealthier orders of society ; nor is 

 it imagined that these articles of food and drink have become scarcer, though they be 

 now interdicted to the poorer classes. As with these, so it it is with salmon ; the whole 

 state of society has changed within twenty years, and science has altered every thing. 

 To suppose that salmon, whose breeding ground is to a certain degree limited, and much 

 interfered with artificially, could be made to increase indefinitely, is at least a strange 

 supposition ; and to imagine that a much prized article of food which thirty years ago 

 could not have been forwarded to the great national market London, during a great part 

 of the year, without running almost certain risk of spoiling, should now be brought 

 into the smaller and inferior markets, and sold at a price suited to the means of the 

 mass of the inhabitants of small towns, is quite unreasonable, and what will assuredly 

 never again happen. 



In a word, the farmer, and the inhabitants on the banks of rivers generally, in for- 

 mer times caught, as they in fact still do, towards the close of the year, an enormous 

 quantity of unspawned fish, which they kippered and prepared in a variety of ways. 

 By taking the kelts in the spring they added to this stock of unnatural, and no doubt 

 most unwholesome, food, on which they fed their labourers and apprentices throughout 

 the year. 



It seems to me an agreeable delusion, but still a delusion, that as salmon were once 

 so abundant as to be used as an article of food by the peasantry and poorer orders of 

 society, so, by wise regulations, this state of matters may return only, I should suppose, 

 with the loss of all the lights and knowledge of civilized life acquired in the interval. 

 At that time, the voyage from Scotland to London averaged three weeks or a month ; 

 now it is accomplished in forty-eight hours. What conveys men, will carry salmon to 

 market. Ice packing has been in use only within these few years ; and extensive pickling 

 on the spot where the fish are taken, has become quite common. The persons who 

 maintain the delusion I speak of must have forgotten all this ; salmon is fast becoming 

 a part of the game of the land, and laws for its protection as game will probably soon 

 be enforced. 



6. Observations to determine the Comparative Advantages of Sea and River Salmon Fish- 

 ings. The rights of Proprietorship in Salmon, and to whom naturally that right be- 

 longs An attempt to show the exact Limit of a River Fishing, calculated with a view to 



the preservation of the Salmon, and the interest not only of the Proprietors of these Fish- 

 ings but of the Public. A plan to extend Sea Fishings all over the Empire. On the ne- 

 cessity of a total change in the Mode of Fishing most of the Salmon Rivers in Scotland. 



THIS extended section has been omitted at the request of several members of the 

 Royal Society, who have suggested that its vast importance renders it a fit subject to 



