196 THE SALMON. 



Besides all tlie facts and arguments against fixed 

 nets, there is the important if not conclusive considera- 

 tion, that, speaking as to legislation, the question is 

 really res judicata. It has been before many tribunals, 

 and all, after hearing evidence, have come to the same 

 decision. Time after time, Royal Commissions and 

 Committees of both Houses of Parliament have con- 

 demned the existing system, and handed it over to the 

 Government and the law for execution. That sentence 

 has already been carried out for England, and is in pro- 

 cess of being carried out for Ireland ; and it is anomalous, 

 as well as unreasonable and unjust, that when all are 

 under the same condemnation, the system should be 

 brought to execution as to England and Ireland, and 

 reprieved as to Scotland, where its earliest and its 

 greatest offences have been committed. The exceeding 

 anomalousness of this surely temporary state of things 

 is illustrated very curiously, if rather in caricature, by 

 the fact, that certain fixed nets are suppressed in Scot- 

 land (after 1st January next) by the late Scotch Act, 

 and that these are the only nets of the kind, in Scotland 

 or elsewhere, which possessed the claim or excuse of 

 something like antiquity. The more immediate reason for 

 making the shores of the Solway Firth an exception to 

 the rest of Scotland is, that the proprietors on the Eng- 

 lish shore very justly and naturally insisted that, as the 

 nets on the two sides of the firth, though on one side 

 they stand in Scotland, and on the other in England, 

 virtually captured the same broods of fish, they should 

 be subject to the same laws of fishing. In further illus- 

 tration of the anomalous and untenal^le condition of 



