50 



weighing 140 tons 14 cwt. qr. 14 lb., which, counting 

 according to the mode there practised, 120 Ibs. to the cwt., 

 give 337,694| Ibs., and at a shilling a pound, the sum of 

 16,884^. 4-s. 6d., and the quantity of salmon shipped by him 

 and his partner from their Bann, Bush, Foyle,Ballema, Bally- 

 shannon and Port Rush Fisheries, from 1808 to 1823, in- 

 cluding the shipments for the last year to London, Bristol, 

 and other places, was 2,134 tons 14 cwt. 3qrs. 11 Ibs., which, 

 at a shilling per lb., will be found to have made the enormous 

 sum of 239,14R 3s" * 



" We cannot" (says a writer in an article on Fisheries in the 

 Dublin Review for 1841) " collect any authentic data with 

 respect to the produce of other fisheries ; but when such is the 

 produce of these small ones, which can bear no comparison 

 with the Salmon fisheries of the Shannon, Kenmare, and 

 Blackwater, we may conclude that the value of all the fisheries 

 from which the public are excluded, is not under 500,000^. 

 a-year ; yet of such extraordinary improvements are the 

 fisheries capable, that Mr. Little stated before the Committee 

 of 1824, that, if proper protection were afforded to the breeding 

 fish, the spawn and fry, the fisheries might be increased so 

 much, that we would hardly find a market for the fisli in this 

 kingdom? 



For a long series of years, endeavours have been made by 

 the proprietors of fisheries to protect their property from 

 poachers, and various Acts of Parliament have been enacted 

 with that object. It has long been a matter admitted by all 

 persons acquainted with the natural history of the salmon, that 

 these fish frequent particular rivers for the purpose of depo- 

 siting their spawn, and of breeding in them ; and that in any 

 river where the parent fish are destroyed, or the stock injured 

 by poachers, that in such rivers the breed of salmon declines, 

 and that the fish disappear from such rivers ; whereas in rivers 

 where the salmon are carefully preserved, the stock increases 

 rapidly, and the annual produce is augmented. It has been 



* See Fishery Reports for 1824, 1825 and 1836. 



