102 THE BORDER ANGLER. 



childhood with the Shorter Catechism and the Whole 

 Duty of Man are far from recognising the obliga- 

 tions laid down in certain statutes made and provided 

 for the protection of the salmon-fisheries of the river 

 Tweed and its tributaries. Combining the poaching 

 in the upper streams with the netting of kelts in the 

 lower part of the Tweed, probably not ten per cent, of 

 the fish that have entered in winter to spawn have 

 hitherto been allowed to return to the sea. Those killed 

 in this way have not, of course, appeared in any statis- 

 tics of the annual yield of salmon, but nevertheless have 

 perhaps equalled the entire numbers of clean fish taken 

 in the proper season ; and, taking this slaughter along 

 with the capture of grilses, which are fish that are 

 killed before they have ever helped to propagate their 

 kind, we have what might appear amply sufficient 

 reasons for the diminution of salmon. Unless, indeed, 

 they breed in the sea which there is no good ground 

 for believing we cannot help being amazed at the 

 extraordinary fecundity which keeps up the species as 

 it is kept up, in the face of so many and such compre- 

 hensive destructive processes ; for after all, it is not 

 until, as' in the case of the Clyde, the filth of a great 

 city and its factories gives the finishing blow, that the 

 salmon is rooted out from our rivers. Even in the 

 Clyde, a few fish still make their way up every year 

 past Glasgow to Stonebyres Linn. 



Luckily, the river-trout is individually nearly as 

 prolific as the salmon, and there is less temptation to 

 pursue it by the methods or to the extent that would 

 involve the risk of destroying the breed. There has 

 always been, and still is, a certain amount of netting, 



