46 THE SALMON FISHERIES. 
partly for milling, were not interfered with unless the 
fishing right was retained, in which case the construction 
of a fish-pass was required, with “such a flow of water 
constantly running through it as will enable salmon to pass 
up and down such pass.” 
At the time when this statute was framed the fear pre- 
vailed that the construction of a fish-pass meant serious 
injury to the milling power, and as, in the then im- 
poverished condition of the fisheries, the milling value of a 
dam was usually greater than its fishing value, the owner, 
having to choose between the retention of the former unim- 
paired, and its possible injury if he retained both, hesitated 
to sacrifice, as he thought, a real present value for a doubt- 
ful future one. The possibility of the fishery becoming—by 
the simple process of giving a few spawners access to the 
upper waters from which the dam cut them off—so largely 
improved as to far exceed, in future years, the value of the 
mill, did not present itself to the minds of dam-owners 
generally ; and, acting on the principle that—to adapt a 
familiar proverb—a mill on the land was worth a good 
many fish not yet in the river, they in most cases preferred 
to let their fishing rights go, and to retain their milling rights 
intact. But the case of the fisheries was not improved. 
The neglect to make a fish-pass involved the forfeiture of 
the right to fish, but it left the obstruction caused by the 
dam as great as ever. Greater, indeed, than ever ; for with 
the fishing right all direct inducement to the owner to pass 
the fish over the dam vanished ; not only was the existing 
fishery abandoned, but the opportunity of increasing 
its value was abandoned’ too. Parliament overlooked the 
fact that it would have been of far greater advantage to the 
fisheries to allow but one fish to pass over the dam for 
every ten that might be caught there, than to take away the 
