22 



On the other hand, there may easily occur cases in which 

 the interests of the fisheries are in danger of being over- 

 looked from the want of some Argus-eyed body watching 

 in every direction for anything that may, directly or indi- 

 rectly, affect them for good or for evil. If a National 

 Fisheries Society had existed in the middle of last century 

 it is very improbable that the weirs, w^hich then began to 

 multiply in all directions, would have been allowed to estab- 

 lish themselves without some stand being made on behalf 

 of the salmon fisheries. I have elsewhere endeavoured to 

 show that, when the introduction of pound locks, a hundred 

 years ago, transformed weirs from an obstacle to navigation 

 into an aid to inland navigation, the resistance which had 

 been offered to dams ever since the time of Magna Charta, 

 partly for the sake of the fisheries, but more particularly 

 on behalf of the freedom of river navigation, suddenly 

 changed into a zealous advocacy of these structures, on 

 account of the service they rendered, with the help of navi- 

 gation locks, to the boating interest. The fisheries were 

 forgotten, with the result that from this, among other causes, 

 many rivers were entirely denuded of salmon, and the rest 

 brought to the verge of exhaustion. 



The same with pollutions. As mining and manufacturing 

 enterprise grew in this country the interests of the fisheries 

 were more and more neglected. Little by little the evil of 

 pollutions increased. One small factory or mine, whose 

 refuse was a mere bagatelle, formed the nucleus of a vast 

 collection of industrial works, the united volume of whose 

 filth was sufficient to poison a whole watershed. It would 

 be not the least important object of a Society devoting 

 itself to the interests of the fisheries to guard in the future 

 against similar agencies inimical to the welfare of the 

 fisheries, and to seek to devise remedies for those from 



