SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 131 



you bring forward to show what passes under water, or that it 

 was the same fish, unless you had indeed some of Dr Fleming's 

 balloons tied to them? and then you might no doubt trace 

 their motions. Mr Steavenson, however, was not troubled 

 with any questions of the kind, being a stanch stake-net 

 fisher whose evidence it would be by no means advisable to 

 demolish. 



In taking a view of the proceedings of the Committee, 

 nothing strikes a man so much as the total absence, on the 

 part of both the chairman and the witnesses, of all knowledge 

 of the true nature, and instincts, and habits, and migratory 

 movements, of the fish ^n question. The witnesses, indeed, 

 could only answer such questions as were put to them ; and 

 they were in general so frivolous, and often so absurd, and 

 even ludicrous, that it excites wonder how wise men and 

 great legislators could put the like. We repeat, let the 

 evidence of the stake-net fishers Johnstone and Halliday 

 only be looked at: the complacency with which the same 

 silly interrogatories are repeated every instant, to show off 

 their system in the most captivating light, in order to impose 

 upon the ignorant public ; for what could be more ridiculous 

 than to be constantly putting question upon question, which it 

 was impossible any man could answer, relative to the motions 

 of the fish in an element where no man, as we said before, 

 could trace them for five seconds together, - and even about 

 their intentions ! Could anything be more farcical ? 



But while this was going on, the most important point of the 

 whole, in so far as regards the public viz. the obstruction and 

 DANGER to navigation from the engines in question, was slurred 

 over with very little notice. This point Mr Kennedy seems 

 to have cautiously avoided, having put only a few questions 

 on the subject to the stake-net fishers, whose answers, dictated 

 by their own interest, he was sure of. One of the witnesses 

 examined in the Committee had been prosecuted in a court of 

 law for directing an engine of great extent, carried across an 

 estuary (and which by overlapping another of almost equal 

 extent, carried out from the opposite side, so that a boat in 

 avoiding the one was thrown upon the other, thus rendering 



