120 SALMONID^ OF BRITAIN. 



individuals to set up cmives or weirs, and it was enacted that " all weirs from 

 henceforth shall be utterly put down by Thames and Medway, and through all 

 England, except the sea-coast."* What this exception referred to is now a 

 mystery, as no fixed engines existed along the sea-coast in those times. It, 

 however, shows that salmon fisheries as early as the time of Magna Charta were 

 being legislated for and px-otected as property. We find especial enactments 

 subsequently in the English statutes respecting allowing salmon a close time. 

 The 13th Edward IV, cap. 47 ( ? 1474), prohibited the taking of these fish from 

 Nativity of Our Lady (September 8th), until St. Martin's Day (November 12th) 

 in the Humber, Ouse, Trent, Done, Arre, Derwent, Wharfe, Nid, Yore, Swale 

 and Tees. 



Passing over numerous subsequent Acts and how they were more or less 

 evaded, we find respecting weirs the following decision given at the commence- 

 ment of this century. The Lord Chief Justice EUenborough in a judgment 

 (Weld V. Hornby, 7 East's Reports, p. 195) proceeded to say, " The erection of 

 weirs across rivers was reprobated in the earliest periods of our law. They were 

 considered as public nuisances." ..." This was followed up by subsequent Acts, 

 treating them as public nuisances, forbidding the erection of new ones, and the 

 enhancing, straightening, and enlarging of those which had aforetime existed." 

 ..." And, however, twenty years of acquiescence may bind parties whose 

 private rights only are affected, yet the public have an interest in the suppression 

 of public nuisances though of longer standing." 



Subsequent to the Report of the Commission appointed to inquire into the Salmon 

 Fisheries of England and Wales in 1860,t and of which Sir W. [Jardine was 

 president, J the Act of 1861 was passed which repealed the twenty-one existing 

 Acts and became the foundation of our present laws. In it polluting and 

 poisoning rivers and the use of lights and spears for assisting in capturing salmon, 

 the employment of small meshed nets§ and new fixed engines in the captnre of 



* " Omnes ItifJelH dcponautur de cetero penitus per Tamisiam et Medwayan et per totam 

 Angliam, nisi per costeram maris." (See 9 Henry III, c. 23, when confirming Magna Charta.) 

 This has been held (Lord Lecontield )'. Lord Lonsdale) to have been enacted for securing a free 

 waterway, and that the protection of fisheries was merely an afterthought brought up in 1472. 

 "A l<idcUe or kidel, a dam in a river to catch fish." (Bailey, Etymolorjical English Dictionary, 

 1747.) Halliwell, Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Edition ix, 1878, observed that 

 Blount defined it as "a dam or open wear in a river, with a loop or narrow cut in it, accommo- 

 dated for the laying of engines to catch fish." In Act 12 Edward IV, c. 7, it recites that one of 

 the reasons for forbidding the use of kidels was "en salvation de tout frye de pesson procreez en 

 lez mesmes." 



t The Commissioners reported that the decrease of the salmon fisheries was consequent 

 upon " (1) Obstructions to the free passage of fish. (2) The use of fixed engines. (3) Defective 

 regulation of fence times or close seasons. (4) Illegal fishing ; destruction of unseasonable fish ; 

 spawning fish ; spent fish ; young, or fry. (.5) The want of an organized system of management 

 of the rivers and fisheries, affording the means of efficient protection against poaching and other 

 destructive and illegal practices. (6) Poisoning of waters by the efilux from mines. (7) Pollution 

 of w-aters by manufacturers, gasworks, and other nuisances. (8) Confusion and uncertainty of 

 the law, and difliculty of enforcing its penalties against offenders." (Page ix.) 



*: Whether this permission to extend the open season after September 1st was a judicious 

 departure from the spirit of the Act of 1861 has been questioned. Captain Pinkett, Chairman of 

 the Taw and Torridge Fishery Board, observed (Field, December 18th, 1886), " Among those who 

 had studied the case the impression was strengthening that it was an error ever to have extended 

 the open season after September 1st. He himself had not the slightest doubt that strict adherence 

 to the close time of the Act of 1861 would have largely increased the summer harvest in the 

 estuary of the Taw, both in number and in size." Although much evidence has been adduced to 

 prove that this extension of the open season has been followed in certain localities by the rivers 

 becoming later, still some assertions on this score which have been advanced scarcely bear 

 examination. At p. 63 is a statement by the Usk Board of Cojtscrvators and the present 

 Inspector of Salmon Fisheries, that such has occurred in the Usk, but the evidence of Sir W. 

 Jardine's Committee in 1860 (see p. 118) lead to the opposite opinion. The accuracy of 

 the former parties having been challenged in The Field (January 8th, 1887) has been left 

 unanswered. 



At p. CO (ante) wiU be found the incidence of the close season in England and Wales. 



§ It has been contended by some that prohibiting fishing with small meshed nets (even 

 though capable of taking an occasional salmon) and the using of night and set lines during close 

 months has done more harm than good, because trout, pike, and eels were formerly thus captured 



