116 THE SALMON. 



has produced these results, but the drainage of all the 

 land in the country, and in the chief degree the land in 

 high-lying districts at the sources of the rivulets or burns, 

 in almost none of which are there any salmon, and in 

 none any ownership of salmon-fisheries. In the third 

 place, the owners of salmon-fisheries, in Scotland at least, 

 are not ordinarily, and are never necessarily, the owners 

 also of land, either close on the river or elsewhere ; 

 salmon-fisheries in Scotland, as already stated, not being 

 an appurtenance of the land, but a separate property, of 

 course with separate management and interests. 



The next cause of decrease requiring mention is one 

 which has been too readily assumed to be irremovable, 

 obstructions and pollutions consequent on the rise of 

 population and industry on the banks of rivers. The 

 existence and extent of this cause need no detailed 

 proof, for wherever it gets fairly or unfairly into full 

 operation, it soon results, not in mere decay, but in 

 extermination, which everybody can see, and nobody can 

 deny. Multitudes of rivers in England have been long 

 ago utterly depopulated (the Thames among them) ; 

 others (such as the Tyne) reduced to shadows of their 

 former selves ; and even in Scotland there have already 

 been extermination in some rivers, vast injury in others, 

 and in all rivers not already past praying for, threats of 

 further evil, every day increasing in magnitude and im- 

 minence. The chief case of entire extinction in Scotland 

 is that of the Clyde, in prophetic allusion to which, per- 

 haps, it is that the heraldic arms of the city of Glasgow 

 comprise a salmon, with a ring in its nose, and literally 

 " up a tree." The South Esk, in Forfarshire, is also stated 



