SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 125 



parts of the ocean to which he has told us he believes they 

 retire ? Why did they come upon our coasts at all, if they had 

 no intention, or were impelled by no instinct, to proceed to the 

 rivers ? He ought to show us what their object was. It is evi- 

 dent that the Doctor fell into the stake-net error of considering 

 salmon as mere common fishes like haddocks, swimming about 

 the shores at random, and entering rivers as chance might 

 direct, for the purpose of breeding ; but then, how can he re- 

 concile this belief that they migrate to EEMOTE parts of the 

 ocean, and his admission that they consist of tribes, or different 

 breeds, or families belonging to the different rivers ? In point 

 of consistency, our naturalist is nowise better than the herd of 

 stake-net fishers. 



The Doctor further states that the capture of these 30,000 

 salmon by the stake-nets, occasioned neither a decrease of the 

 price of salmon at market, nor a diminution of the produce of 

 the river fisheries. It is not easy to reconcile these two facts. 

 It is well known that the price of all articles at market depends 

 upon the increased or diminished supply. A very little reflec- 

 tion upon the subject might have satisfied the Doctor, that 

 there could not have been a real increase of so great a quantity 

 as 30,000 fish, or it must have occasioned a fall in the market- 

 price ; and he ought, therefore, as we said before, to have hesi- 

 tated before he threw the weight of his testimony, as a natural- 

 ist, into the scale of the stake-net fishers, particularly as the 

 vicinity of his residence to Perth gave him ample means of 

 ascertaining the truth. Had he been disposed to do this, Mr 

 Buist could have shown him, as he showed the Committee, 

 that the river fisheries fell off exactly in proportion to the 

 increase of the stake-nets, till at length they scarcely produced 

 a third of their usual quantity of fish, the other two-thirds 

 being intercepted by those engines ; and he could have ascer- 

 tained the accuracy of the fact by a personal inspection of the 

 books of the Dundee Shipping Company, by whose vessels the 

 fish of both parties were sent to market. We have therefore 

 nothing complimentary to say in favour of the Doctor's can- 

 dour, any more than of his knowledge of the salmon-fishery. 

 The stake-nets were no doubt, as we said before, very conve- 



