15 
curator Fiscal (who is the local Public Prosecutor in Scot- 
land) to institute proceedings in respect of the destruction 
of thousands of Salmonidz, which gave to the Tweed Com- 
missioners a right of action. The County Sheriff awarded a 
sum of £2, being the full allowable penalty. The party 
convicted appealed to the Supreme Court in Edinburgh. 
There, the Sheriff's judgment was affirmed, with an award 
of £12 of expenses; but it cost the Tweed Commissioners 
£157 to obtain the conviction!—a proof of the utter in- 
sufficiency of the existing law to meet even a case so mani- 
festly flagrant as that just referred to. 
This subject of river pollution suggests a remark of 
wider application. Important as it is to afford to Fishery 
Boards more legal power for the protection of fish, the 
gross pollution of our rivers, streams, and lakes by sewage 
and manufacturing refuse, ought to be prevented for the 
sake also of higher interests. The health and domestic 
comforts of thousands of our population demand, that there 
be a stringent law declaring such pollution to be a crime, 
irrespective of any proof of injury to fish or to individual 
riparian proprietors. A public officer ought to be appointed, 
not only to prosecute such offences when they occur, but to 
prevent the discharge of noxious matters (whether from 
towns or private houses), and even the erection on the 
banks of rivers of any manufacturing works, which would 
cause gross pollution of the water. 
(4) Another point of importance, as regards Scotch 
salmon fisheries, is the mode of enforcing the prescribed 
rules of fishing. 
On the Tweed we have no difficulty with the lessees of 
the fishings, or the men employed in working the nets, 
who are about 476 in number. But we have great difficulty 
in repressing the poaching which goes on during the 
