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the argument applies to each kind in its degree. I think sufficient lias 

 now been said to sliew, with regard to the Gannet or other sea birds, the 

 herring at all (;vi;nts can hold its own. "Wt; will now turn to the sahnoii, 

 on account of which Mr (Gordon Cunnuing, as appears in the Ivvernctfn 

 Courier of 26th October 1880, urges, in a letter of his to the Clerks of 

 the Inverness District Fishery Board, the necessity of taking steps to have 

 the Sea Birds Preservation Act repealed as regards Scotland, in conse- 

 quence of the destruction nmv knoion to be wrought among par and 

 smolts by Gannets, Gulls, and other birds, now fostered by that vi.i.f- 

 taken piece of legislation. This, it is added, has strongly been recom- 

 mended by the Herring Fishery Commissioners in their Report of 1878, 

 but nothing has been done in consequence. Yes, but it must be recollected 

 when the Commissioners penned that resolution No. 1.3, which I have 

 already alluded to, it was entirely in regard to the herring fishery and 

 not the salmon — a resolution, besides, which was shewii by the British 

 Association to be foiuided on exaggerated evidence, which was fcu'warded, 

 as already mentioned, to the Home Secretary, and was never refuted 

 (that I am aware of), but tacitly, as it were, approved of, by the very 

 fact (which Mr Gordon Cumming mentions) of the non-repealing of 

 the Act. As to the great destruction wrought among pars and smolts, 

 is there any evidence to show that there has been so enormoiis a con- 

 sumption by these birds as actually to have impoverished the fishings, 

 or that the real injury from which the salmon fisheries are said to be 

 suffering is done by these birds alone ? This is the point ; and if there 

 is no real substantiated proof to this effect, which I have certainly failed 

 to find, then let the birds in all justice have the benefit until this has 

 been thoroughly sifted. What we want to get at is the truth. I have 

 taken some pains to investigate these accusations, and have been in com- 

 munication with the principal Tacksmen on the Tay, Cromarty Frith, 

 and Dornoch Frith, in the neighbourhood of the injuries alleged. In 

 the Tay, and the adjoining shores in the Tay District, the opinion is 

 that the sea birds have not lieen in any way injurious. In the Cromarty 

 Frith, the Tacksman who holds the fishings from Cromarty to Dingwall, 

 at a rent of £1200 a-year, also the fishings of the Dornoch on both sides, 

 at a rental of £1600, assures me that any real injury done by sea birds 

 to the fishery is mere talk ; that the Gannet seldom molests them, and 

 that the bird which is more destructive to smolts than any other, both 

 in the Cromarty and the Dornoch Friths, is the Golden Eye Duck, 

 appearing in large flocks at the beginning of April, just as the smolts 

 descend, and that he has shot them with three and four smolts in 

 them; and this no doubt is the same in the Moray and Beauly Friths. 

 Now these birds are not in the Act at all, or ever were, and may be shot 



