192 THE SALMON. 



posing very severe restrictions upon him, and then that 

 another man round the corner, where perhaps there is 

 not very mucli difference naturally, though one is called 

 the estuary and the other the sea-shore, should be allowed 

 to put up engines which the other was prevented from 

 using, to the injury and almost to the anniliilation, as 

 it has proved, of the older grants. The gift was accepted 

 and for centuries used under this presumption or fact, 

 and if the recipients lost anything by being put on the 

 same footing with their neighbours, it would not be a 

 property they had got from the Crown, l)ut one they had 

 taken in spite of the intention of the Crown and the 

 spirit of the law. 



The public or parliamentary mind has not sufficiently 

 in view that all that value which the fixed-net fisheries 

 have had added to their original value by the use 

 of these engines has been so much and more subtracted 

 from the value of other and older fisheries. The fixed 

 net fisheries, we are told, axe properties that have been 

 bought and sold, produce large rents, and involve the 

 interests of widows and children. But when and out of 

 what have these properties been created ? And are 

 there no " widows and children" but those of the owners 

 of bag-nets ? Those properties — i.e., so much of them as 

 is dependent on the use of fixed engines — have been 

 created within comparatively a few years, and at the 

 cost of other and older proprietors. All has been sub- 

 tracted from the river proprietors to whom is denied the 

 use of the very modes that have impoverished them. 

 There are or were some valuable fixed-net fisheries 

 created within twenty years on the coasts of Ayrshire ; 



