SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 43 



result, to the fishery. This fishing-apparatus is formed of a 

 long range of stakes carried out from the shore sometimes a 

 mile into the water, that is, to the low-water mark, with nets 

 and traps affixed to them ; the whole forming a barrier of the 

 most formidable description in the course of the fish, and 

 which, it must be evident to all, must not only break and 

 scatter the shoals as they come on, and thus most materially 

 hurt the fishery, as regards the public, but which may be so 

 multiplied on the coasts, as to ruin the river fisheries entirely.* 

 If we only consider the progress of the salmon shoals along 

 the coast, the effects of such machinery, placed in their way, 

 may be easily conceived. We have already remarked that, in 

 coasting their way, in search of the rivers, they generally keep 

 at a short distance from the land. When a shoal meets with 

 a stake-net, some of the fish are caught in the traps, or cruives, 

 or what is called its chambers, others start off ; in short, the 

 shoal is broken and dispersed. The scattered fish, however, 

 always guided by their instincts, gather in again to the land, 

 singly, or in groups, and continue their course with the tide, 

 until they meet with another similar engine, when the same 

 capture and dispersion is repeated. It sometimes happens 

 that, as stake-nets are, as we said, always placed on ground left 

 dry at ebb-tide, the shoals may pass on the outside of some of 

 them at low water ; but this is but a partial intermission, for 

 as the tide rises, and the fish are enabled to approach the land, 

 they fall into other engines farther on, so that at length only a 

 few scattered fish reach the rivers singly, instead of whole 

 shoals as formerly. It is, therefore, not easy to conceive a 



* Bag-nets are, if possible, still more destructive. Both are constructed upon 

 the same principle, the only difference between them being that the one is fixed 

 by stakes, and the other by anchors, and floated by corks. Stake-nets are 

 always placed on sands, or ground left dry by the receding of the tide ; but 

 bag-nets may be set in the alveus or deep water, and their arms or leaders be 

 extended an indefinite length, so as in fact to embrace a whole frith. So many 

 bag-nets have been placed in the sea, near the mouth of the river Don, at Aber- 

 deen, that nearly three-fourths of the salmon are, it is said, now intercepted 

 before they can reach the river by which the river heritors are utterly de- 

 prived of their properties. If the object of Law is protection of property, it is 

 not so felt at Aberdeen. But, in Scotland, Law is one thing, and Justice another. 

 They may sometimes meet, but in general Law, or what is called Law, kicks 

 Justice out of the field. 



