114 SALMON-FISHEEY OF SCOTLAND. 



" When you were examined before, your evidence was confined to 

 the river Lee principally!" "I was examined, I beg to say, with 

 great respect to the Committee, only on ONE side of the question." 



" On which side of the question 1 " " I trust I am not indecorous 

 in saying that there were no questions asked me that bore on the 

 interest of the proprietors." 



" You consider you were examined against the proprietors ? " " / 

 was asked such questions as bore against them" 



Such was not the case with regard to the stake-net fishers, 

 Johnstone, Halliday, Little, and Co., who were brought out in 

 high style, to show off their system to the best possible 

 advantage, by statements sometimes so perfectly absurd as to 

 be absolutely ludicrous. The Committee ask Johnstone, 



" Is the Committee to understand that there are salmon which 

 frequent the friths, and go out again to sea, without going up the 

 river ? " YES." 



Now, we would like to ask Mr Kennedy how he conceived 

 it to be possible for the witness to know whether there were or 

 not ? After the salmon reach our coast, and particularly after 

 they enter the estuaries and rivers, it is their nature to conceal 

 themselves as much as possible. No fisherman can trace their 

 motions in a river or in a frith for five seconds together. He 

 may see one leap out of the water occasionally, perhaps once 

 or twice in a day, perhaps not once in a week, which is all he 

 can know on the subject. He may see a salmon leap with his 

 head downward with the ebb tide, if the rivers are in a low 

 state ; and he may see one, half an hour thereafter, leap with 

 his head upward, returning with the flood-tide ; but he cannot 

 know whether it be the same fish or not, it being utterly beyond 

 human power, as we said, to trace their motions under water 

 for five seconds together ; and yet Johnstone and Halliday, 

 and other stake-net fishers, talk of both the motions and inten- 

 tions of the fish, as they would of a flock of sheep upon a 

 meadow. 



The Committee, in the same strain, ask Mr Halliday, 

 " Are there a great many salmon which come into friths that do 

 not go to the rivers, but return again to the sea ? " " There are a 

 great many." 



