SALMON. 195 



Salmons, at twopence per pound, one for the servants, as being 

 cheaper than meat, 4$. 9d" A common price at present is 

 from two shillings up to four shillings the pound. The 

 highest price on record is that of a Salmon which weighed 

 nineteen pounds, and which, in February, 1809, was sold for 

 a guinea the pound; a freak of ostentation that was rather 

 caused by a craving to be talked of than to satisfy the 

 appetite. 



As a subject of curiosity we will only glance at the laws 

 which at a distant date were made to regulate the trade in 

 Salmon when brought from out of the kingdom, of course in 

 a pickled or salted state. In the year 1423, the second of 

 Henry the Sixth, it is ordered that "the buttes of Samon 

 comyng be wey of merchandise into this land out of straunge 

 countrees, and also in this land ymade, shulden be of cei in 

 mesure;" and that among the strange countries Scotland had 

 long held a principal place appears from an Act of Parliament 

 of the thirty-first of Edward the Third, (1357,) where the fish 

 brought from thence are termed Salmon of Berwick, the con- 

 veyance from which place to London at that time could not 

 have been effected with fish in a fresh condition. It appears 

 further, from an Act of the twenty-second of Edward the 

 Fourth, (1482,) in which the right of fishing in the Tweed is 

 let on farm to the merchants and freemen of Berwick, with a 

 monopoly of the Salmon, that the packing of Salmon in 

 barrels was further regulated by the same Edward, and also 

 by Henry the Eighth, by whom the monopoly was continued; 

 so that Camden was warranted in saying that in ancient times 

 Salmon were the chief commodity of Scotland. 



The principal cause which reduced this trade to insignificance 

 was the contrivance by Mr. George Dempster of packing the 

 fresh fish in ice, by which means, and the aid of the railroad, 

 instead of a sailing vessel they are now sent to the metropolis 

 only a little less firm and fresh than when they were caught. 

 The fisheries of Ireland are at present in a prosperous condition, 

 of which we take the example of the River Foyle, from which 

 were sent away in one year of not extraordinary abundance 

 eighty thousand Salmon. In May of the year 1831, there 

 reached Billingsgate, from the River Spey, in Scotland, seventy 

 boxes of iced fish, of which thirty were (Salmon) Trout, the 



