SALMON AT BILLINGSGATE. 7 
year ; this would give 30,000 fish, worth, at only Ios. each, 
#15,000. But onthe Usk alone ten fish fell to each rod, 
and on other rivers sport was even better, so that this 
estimate also is palpably insufficient. 
Another means of estimating the value of the salmon 
fisheries of the United Kingdom is afforded by the returns 
of salmon sold at Billingsgate. In 1882 there were sold at 
that market 22,968 boxes of salmon from Scotland, 1,412 
from the Tweed, 4,720 from Ireland, and 2,186 from 
England and Wales, or a total of 31,286 boxes of an 
average weight of one cwt. each. This, at Is. per Ib., 
would give £34,415 as the gross value of salmon, the 
produce of the British and Irish rivers, sold at the metro- 
politan market alone. But £25,000 worth of salmon were 
taken in the Tyne alone, £7,500 worth were taken in the 
Severn alone, £5,000 worth were taken in the Dee alone, 
and £12,000 worth were taken by a single company in the 
Tweed ; and when it is remembered that such great centres 
of population as Newcastle, Carlisle, York, Leeds, Don- 
caster, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Chester, Hudders- 
field, Bradford, Birmingham, Bristol, Southampton, and 
Plymouth, and others in England—to say nothing of the 
large centres of consumption in Scotland and Ireland— 
situated in the neighbourhood, if not on the banks, of the 
most productive rivers, all affording ready markets for the 
sale of the fish before it found its way to the metropolis, it will 
easily be supposed that Billingsgate did not receive one- 
tenth, perhaps not one-twentieth, of the total quantity 
caught. The estimate, therefore, which places the value of 
the salmon fisheries of the United Kingdom at about three- 
quarters of a million sterling, annually, is probably fairly 
accurate. As will be shown further on, this sum by no 
means represents the quantity of salmon which our rivers 
