SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 11 



than before the introduction of the fixed nets. This is a fact so 

 perfectly notorious that it cannot be disputed or denied. In 

 order to remedy the evil, a new Act of Parliament has been 

 resorted to for the protection of the breeding fish in the rivers, 

 to the destruction of which the stake-net owners of course 

 ascribed the decline of the fishery, which has been greatly 

 accelerated by their own engines. Of this act notice shall be 

 taken hereafter. The destruction of the breeding fish is un- 

 doubtedly a great evil, which has prevailed at all times, and 

 formerly, we believe, to a much greater extent than of late years. 

 Where the breeding-fish are killed, however, the effects are 

 immediately visible in the scarcity of young fish. But it is 

 not here that the decline of the fishery is by any means most 

 conspicuous, since the young fish are comparatively plentiful 

 and constitute now, in effect, the staple of the fishery ; a proof 

 that the alleged destruction of the breeders is not the principal 

 cause of its decline. It is of grown fish that there is the great- 

 est scarcity, because from the multiplicity of fishings, and modes 

 of destruction, the salmon are not allowed to attain their full 

 size. Indeed there is hardly a full grown salmon now to be 

 seen, at least not one for a score that were formerly caught, 

 which could only happen from over-fishing. If all the lambs 

 and year-old sheep in the country were killed, would not mutton 

 be scarce ? It is the same with salmon. And if they grow from 

 five to eight or ten pounds each in a year, and are almost all 

 destroyed in the early stages of their growth, must not the 

 fishery, from this cause alone, be, on the whole, in a declining 

 state ? The weight or absolute quantity of food thus lost to 

 the public is immense ; and until this evil be remedied, which 

 can only be done by restraining fishing operations in the man- 

 ner already hinted at, and affording the necessary protection 

 to the rivers, it is idle to expect that the fishery can ever be 

 brought to a proper state of improvement. If the public want 

 to have abundance of salmon, let the salmon-fishers be com- 

 pelled to return to the rude apparatus of their ancestors, so 

 much ridiculed by our modern stake-net poachers, but in reality 

 the only mode compatible with the preservation of the fishery, 

 and the regular supply of the market. Hacc ha.ctenus. 



