VALUE OF THE SALMON. 13 



the salmon is, in a more than ordinary sense, the free 

 gift of nature, that its importance as an article of food 

 has been undervalued or overlooked. Minute calculations 

 and eloquent speeches are made on such points as the 

 diminution (if any) of the supply of food caused by 

 turning portions of a mountainous district to the pur- 

 pose of feeding deer instead of sheep or black cattle ; 

 but the inflicting of utter barrenness upon rivers, natur- 

 ally yielding every year hundreds of tons of not only 

 nutritious but delicious food, is a procedure which has 

 hitherto received almost no share of public attention, 

 much less indignation. Already, it may be safely said, 

 three-fourths of the natural supply have been lost ; a 

 little more care, and that loss may be repaired ; a little 

 less care, and the loss may be made complete and irre- 

 parable. Nor ought it to be forgotten that in this 

 matter the public have a more immediate, if not a greater 

 interest than the lessees, or perhaps even the proprietors, 

 of fisheries. The number who desire and can afford 

 to eat salmon as a luxury, and still more, the number 

 that on certain occasions must produce the dish at table, 

 has been and is increasing, and when an increasing or 

 maintained demand and a diminishing supply meet each 

 other, we find the result in aggravated prices. The 

 greater the scarcity, the higher the price ; and in this 

 comfortable conviction, and in the hope that the thing 

 would last their time, the larger section of the proprietors 

 and their lessees have been, or at least were, until the 

 recent legislation, going on competing with each other who 

 should kill most and spare least, careless of the future. 

 For many years they had, as Lord Polwarth expressed 



