VALUE OF THE SALMON. 11 



easy to get the statistics of a few localities. Thus 

 salmon-nets employ, on the Tay, about 700 men, receiv- 

 ing in wages about £9000 a year, and on the Tweed, 

 about 350 men, receiving about £4500. Even if the 

 total value or rental were known, it would be impossible 

 to deduce the total amount of employment, the propor- 

 tion of labour to rent differing greatly according to the 

 natural circumstances and the number of separate or 

 competing fisheries in each river or estuary. But the 

 question of employment may, for two reasons, be con- 

 fessed as not entitled to very much weight in estimating 

 the importance of the whole subject. It is an employ- 

 ment which by law — the law of nature quite as much as 

 the law of the land — cannot extend over much more 

 than half the year ; and unfortunately, it is available 

 only during those months in which other kinds of out- 

 door labour are abundant, and is suspended during those 

 months when the other kinds also fail. Further (as shall 

 Ijc afterwards explained), the labour of salmon-fishing is 

 to a great extent lal)our lost, an equal or greater produce 

 being obtainable under a thoroughly reformed mode of 

 fishing, with a mere fraction of the present toil and cost. 

 Whilst thus admitting, however, that the question of 

 employment is of more interest to the few thousands 

 of men — an honest and stalwart race — who live by the 

 dragging of nets, than to the community at large, it is 

 still insisted that (so long, at least, as the present system 

 of working fisheries is continued) the legal " protection" 

 preserving their employment from extinction, is not and 

 would not he given them at the cost of any one else, and 

 that their loss wuuld be noljody's gain. 



