90 SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 



The object of the Scottish Legislature in framing the statutes 

 is obvious. In those remote periods of time, Scotland, always 

 poor from her soil and climate, possessed no article for. export 

 trade save the produce of her fisheries, which nature bestowed 

 liberally on her, to make up for her other wants. Of these 

 fisheries, salmon formed, undoubtedly, a part ; but it is clear 

 that the herring and white-fish fisheries were the most impor- 

 tant in a public or national view ; the care of the Legislature, 

 however, extended equally to both, and, indeed, to the preserva- 

 tion of the fry of every kind of fish around their coasts, as the 

 whole of the statutes show. Even in later times, in the pre- 

 amble to an Act of Queen Anne, it is said, " Our Sovereign 

 Lady and Estates of Parliament, taking it into consideration 

 the great many advantages that may arise to this nation by 

 encouraging the salmon, ivhite and herring, fisheries, they being 

 not only a certain fund to advance the trade and increase the 

 wealth thereof, but also a true and ready way to breed seamen, 

 and set many poor and idle people to work," &c. 



Now, of all the engines by which fry could be destroyed, 

 yairs were by far the most destructive. They consisted of a 

 long range of stakes, with wattling, somewhat resembling a 

 hedge, carried from the land into the sea to low- water mark, in 

 the form of a crescent with a croe, or cruive, in the centre, 

 and a curve or horn at the extremity. These engines, like the 

 present stake-nets, were always placed on the coasts of friths 

 or of the sea, in parts where the tide left the sands dry at low 

 water to a great extent ; for so simple was their construction, 

 that nowhere else could they be of any use. Thus Mr Little 

 states in the Committee " Yairs could not fish but in the 

 TIDE." The tide was, therefore, the sine qua non of all such 

 erections, and hence, as we said, the prohibition in the statutes 

 of these engines "where the TIDE ebbs and flows." In general, 

 they were used more as a matter of convenience than of profit, 

 by affording a constant supply, at every ebb-tide, of small sea- 

 fishes, as flounders, sea-trout, cuddies, and occasionally a few 

 herrings and salmon ; but they were, in every instance, most 

 destructive of the fry of all fishes, floating about the coasts in 

 the easy water near the shore ; and, among the rest, of the fry 



