202 THE BORDER ANGLEK. 



impaired their resources that they could scarcely main- 

 tain even the form of police and protection. For seve- 

 ral months, they had, we believe, only some half-dozen 

 bailiffs. The proprietors of the feeding-streams, feeling 

 utterly uninterested, offered no assistance to repress the 

 bloody maraudings that made the Tweed desolate. As 

 the Scotsman put it in the beginning of November 

 " In one night, since the legal fishing closed, there has 

 been taken by poachers a greater number of fish than 

 were killed by rod during the whole legal season on 

 80 or 100 miles of water ; indeed the one ton of foul 

 Tweed salmon which the London papers record as en- 

 tering Billingsgate market last Monday or Tuesday 

 (one among many such consignments) was probably a 

 greater weight than has been legally killed in Tweed 

 this year above the region of nets. But that the illegal 

 fishers got more than the legal anglers, might have 

 been said of almost any year ; the peculiarity of this 

 year is, that the illegal fishing has now attained a mag- 

 nitude equalling that of the legal fishing of all kinds. 

 From the statements put forth by both parties for once 

 agreeing on the facts there seems little doubt that 

 even already, only three weeks after the close of the 

 legal fishing, the poachers have got as many fish as 

 were taken during the seven legal months by those who 

 pay the rents and wages ; and in point of destructive- 

 nsss, as distinguished from profit, the capture during 

 these three weeks, being almost entirely of breeding 

 fish, is probably a greater impoverishment of the river 

 than two seasons of legal fishing." The bailiffs were 

 utterly powerless, and even at the month of the Tweed 

 net-fishing was nightly even daily carried on in defi- 

 ance of the law. Great quantities of salmon were traced 

 to London, and the dealers in them fined in the London 

 police-courts. Clearly the only way of remedying this 

 deplorable state of things was to enlist the interests and 

 support of the wealthy noblemen and gentlemen upon 

 whose property the chief destruction was committed, 



