92 SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 



Hence Sir H. Davy remarked to the Committee, that by the 

 ancient Scottish law, salmon-fishings were never considered to 

 belong to the coasts. 



The species of machinery called yairs, which were the fore- 

 runners of the stake-nets, and which, as we said, were invari- 

 ably placed, and could only be placed, on the coasts of friths 

 and the sea, actually destroyed immense quantities of the fry 

 of all fishes, as the statutes state. The herrings in particular, 

 as we have before remarked, breed in the friths and on our 

 coasts, where the fry remain till they commence their migra- 

 tion to more distant regions. While, therefore, they continued 

 floating up and down with the tide on the coasts, great quan- 

 tities of them could not but be destroyed, together with the fry 

 of other sea-fishes, and of the salmon in their descent from the 

 rivers, in those yairs. A great herring fisher * has remarked 

 many years ago : 



" In an arm of the sea where a shoal of herrings had been known 

 to spawn the preceding winter, I have seen the fry moving towards 

 the ocean during a considerable time in the early part of the sum- 

 mer. They always keep near the shore, and double every headland 

 in their way, in order that they may not be driven out of their 

 course by the tides and storms in the Channel. Perhaps there may 

 be other causes why they keep near the shore, as that they may be out 

 of the reach of larger fishes, and may have opportunities of picking 

 up those small insects which swarm on the surface." 



Now, observe what Mr John Steavenson states in the Com- 

 mittee : 



" I am acquainted with two or three yairs in the Moray Frith. I 

 consider them most destructive. They are not only destructive of 

 the fry of salmon, but destructive of the fry of every other descrip- 

 tion of fish ; so much so, that it has come within my knowledge that 

 carts have been loaded with the fry of fishes I will not say of sal- 

 mon, but of salmon among others and sent to market." 



And Mr Leslie, another witness in, the Committee, states : 



" Both yairs and stake-nets are destructive of fry. I have seen 

 five large basketfuls of fry taken out of a stake-net, and about a fifth 

 part of them were salmon-fry. Yairs are still more destructive" 



* Mr Melville. 



