OF A SALMON. 47 



Those, oh, ingenuous reader! are part of the 

 perils that await our friend, when the rising tide 

 tempts him to quit Dawpool, in the early grey of 

 morning. They are stake nets, fixed by upright 

 poles in the sandbanks, and ready to entangle in 

 their wide spreading embrace, all that the current 

 of the advancing or receding tide shall bring 

 into them. They are pre-eminently illegal, being 

 "condemned by two or three particular acts of 

 parliament, and having here in this river Dee, 

 one special act levelled -at them, called the 

 " Point of Ayr Act." 



" Do they destroy the salmon ? " 



Let us ask that weather-beaten old fellow, 

 with a purple wizened face, a red nose, and a 

 jacket that once was blue, but whose darns and 

 patches of various hues now all assimilate pretty 

 much to the tone of the mud on the bottom of 

 that up-turned cobble boat on which he is seated. 



" Salmon Sir ! " taking his short black pipe 

 from his lips, and rejoicing the thirsty shore with 

 the usual sequitur. " Salmon ? Lord, Sir, no 

 such luck ! Besides, you see, it ai'nt lawful : we 

 never takes no salmon in the Dee, not with 

 meshes like them ; flukes and sprats, you see, 

 and sometimes a trifle o' herrings. Nothin else 

 to talk on." 



"Well, but my good friend, supposing a 



