FUTURE SALMON LEGISLATION. 193 



but they were carved out of the river-fisheries, which 

 were " confiscated" to the extent of about three-fourths. 

 Fixed-net fisheries to the value of several thousands a 

 year have been created on the coast of Aberdeenshire ; 

 but whilst that process has been going on upon the coasts, 

 the annual value of the produce in the two Aberdeen- 

 shire rivers has been reduced by nearly 18,000 a year! 

 Of the fisheries on the Con on, nine-tenths were trans- 

 ferred in two or three years to a stake-net erected in 

 the Cromarty Firth. About three-fourths of the value 

 of the ancient fisheries on the Ness and Beauly, includ- 

 ing about nine-tenths of the value of the fisheries be- 

 longing to the Corporation of Inverness, were transferred 

 in the course of a few years to the proprietors of the 

 sea-coast down the firth, using engines which the law 

 prohibited to the proprietors farther up, and had been 

 designed to prohibit everywhere. In the Solway, as we 

 have seen, one stake-net, the first of its kind, almost en- 

 tirely swallowed up the neighbouring fisheries, swelled 

 itself up to more than a hundred times its former and 

 natural size and then burst, the whole value of the 

 coast fisheries in that district, now fished by stake and 

 bag nets, being at present about a tenth of what it was 

 when salmon were cheap, and these inventions not found 

 out. In the view of such facts it is scarcely prudent to 

 talk of confiscation and transference. 



Besides what they take from the older and rightful 

 properties, those engines take a great deal from the 

 public, and do not proportionally benefit those who 

 claim them as property. It is their nature to operate 

 in deterring and obstructing as well as in capturing, and 



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