SALMON IN THE THAMES. 3 
the mysterious visitant returned and asked for food he was 
obliged to reply that he had caught not a single fish. 
Then the stranger revealed his name. ‘I am Peter, keeper 
of the keys of Heaven. When Mellitus arrives to-morrow 
tell him what you have seen and show him the token that 
I, St. Peter, have consecrated my own church of St. Peter, 
Westminster, and have anticipated the Bishop of London. 
For yourself go out into the river ; you will catch a plentiful 
supply of fish, whereof the larger part shall be salmon. 
This I have granted on two conditions, first, that you never 
again fish on Sundays; secondly that you pay a tithe of 
them to the Abbey of Westminster.’”” Whether or not dis- 
obedience to the injunctions of the saint has had any share 
in the combination of causes which have led to the general 
result, it is certain that the “ plentiful supply of fish, whereof 
the larger part shall be salmon,” is no longer to be obtained 
inthe Thames. This grand river does not at the present 
moment contain a single salmon; yet so recently as 
the beginning of the present century—when a single net- 
maker in Fenchurch Street is said to have been paid £ 800 
a year for salmon nets to be used in the Thames—it was 
nothing unusual for twenty salmon to be taken at a single 
haul in Chelsea Reach. Again, a fisherman stated in evi- 
dence before the Royal Commission on Salmon Fisheries 
in 1861 that so recently as 1820 he frequently took “some 
hundreds” of salmon at Laleham, where a boy in a ferry- 
boat used to take 60 or 70 a day with a rod and line, 
which he hung over his boat while plying to and fro 
across the stream. The same witness deposed to having 
seen “twenty salmon lying dead” after spawning “ along 
the course of a hedge not more than 200 yards long.” 
Another witness handed in documents showing that from 
15 to 66 salmon were taken nearly every year between 
B 2 
