THEIR VALUE. 5 
under the more stringent and efficient laws of 1865 and 
1873, their value has gradually improved till it can hardly 
be placed at less than £150,000 a year. 
The fisheries of Scotland and Ireland, under similar 
protection, have—though never reduced to quite so low an 
ebb as those of England and Wales—also revived, and the 
gross produce of the salmon fisheries of the United Kingdom 
may be put at not far short of three-quarters of a million 
sterling. It is doubtful whether this figure conveys an ade- 
quate idea of the importance of the salmon fisheries of the 
United Kingdom as a commercial industry and as a valuable 
form of property. For the last fifteen years an average of 
nearly 3,500 men have taken out a licence to fish for 
salmon with instruments other than rod and line, in 
England and Wales alone. This figure does not include 
either all the “hands” occasionally employed by the actual 
holders of the licences, or the number of men employed by 
private individuals, or a considerable number of men 
fishing outside the limits of the various fishery districts. 
These omissions would probably bring up the total to 4,000 
men employed in the commercial fisheries of England and 
Wales. The Inspectors of Irish Fisheries estimate that 
about 9,000 net fishermen are engaged in the salmon 
fisheries of Ireland. For Scotland, where no licences are 
necessary, the number cannot be put at less than that 
given for Ireland, so that we have a total of 22,000 men 
employed directly for profit in the salmon fisheries. To 
this number must be added the anglers, of whom about 
3,000 in England and 2,000 in Ireland take out licences for 
salmon fishing every year. An estimated addition of 5,000 
salmon anglers in Scotland would give a total of 10,000 
rod fishermen fishing for salmon in the United Kingdom 
every year. The annual revenue from licence duty paid in 
