ON THE CHANNEL-FISHERIES* 91 



necessity, accident, or natural inclination, are, from 

 the narrowness of such rivulets and streams, and 



its source between South Brent and Dean Prior, flowing 

 through Rattery, Harberton, and Ashprington, and thence into 

 the Dart by Cornworthy) ; the greatest part of these, if not the 

 whole, were destroyed by those nocturnal depredators the 

 spearmen. I have been assured, that on this little stream, 

 more than two hundred unseasonable salmon were speared in 

 the autumn of 1819, having entered it for the purpose of 

 spawning ; they were consequently of scarce any value, if not 

 absolutely unwholesome. Thus but little profit accrued to the 

 poacher, whilst the whole of the increase that would have 

 arisen from them was lost to the public, instead of yielding 

 them as formerly, (and as it would do again were the subject 

 properly attended to,) wholesome salmon at the moderate price 

 at which, not many years since, it might be bought ; for many 

 can recollect when salmon sold for three halfpence per pound. 

 Farther, there are on this rivulet, the Harbourne, from New 

 Bridge to Brent, Harberton Ford (a space not exceeding eight 

 miles), nine mills, if not more, every leat to which is a trap for 

 the destruction of the fish, so that if a few by a miracle escape 

 the spear, they must perish, or be taken at the mill-leat. It is 

 generally supposed that the greater part of the fish above men- 

 tioned, in consequence of not being able to surmount the im- 

 passable Totnes weir, returning down the Dart, and finding an 

 opening in this collateral rivulet, entered it, and were conse- 

 quently all destroyed. Hence, then, the necessity of a power 

 in the magistracy, after all improper obstructions are removed, 

 to order the best means which they can devise, to shut out the 

 fish from all such diminutive streams, and keep them in the 

 large rivers where they cannot be so easily destroyed. I know 

 where there are two salmon, a male and female, at the moment 

 at which I write, in a stream so small that a man can step 

 across it. Should they be discovered, their fate is inevitable. 

 It is not meant that this power is to exclude the fish from small 

 streams and to operate to the prejudice of any right of fishery, 



