SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 139 



every man who studies Nature must agree ought to be the case. 

 The Committee ask Mr Proudfoot, " Do you conceive that, in 

 general, one law as to close-time would answer all rivers ? " 

 " I am far from that opinion." To the same question Mr Buist, 

 the most intelligent of all the witnesses, replies, " Most cer- 

 tainly NOT ; " and Mr Sheppard remarks, most justly, that it 

 would be the destruction of the fishery, since the proper close- 

 time for some rivers would comprehend nearly the whole fish- 

 ing season of other rivers. But Messrs Drummond and Ken- 

 nedy, steady to the stake-net principles, think that they can 

 force the salmon of the early and of the late rivers to spawn 

 at the same time ; that what nature made different they can 

 render uniform, and control Nature by an Act of Parliament ! 



And they accordingly fixed one general close-time for all 

 the rivers in Scotland, from the 14th September till the 1st 

 February. This we conceive to be the very essence of absurd- 

 ity. Formerly the fishery ended in many of the Scotch rivers 

 on the 26th of August, and even this was too late for the early 

 rivers by at least a month ; but, instead of fixing the close-time 

 of those rivers on the 1 st of August, the Act authorises the de- 

 struction of the fish that is, of those which ought, unquestion- 

 ably, to be left for breeders to the 14th of September; and this 

 addition of eighteen days to the period of destruction is called 

 lengthening the close-time ; while, to make up for this, they 

 add to close-time the winter months, when no fish go up the 

 rivers to breed, for all the breeders of the season are then up, 

 the clean, or new run, fish which come on at that time being 

 all fish of the ensuing crop, which would not breed till the fol- 

 lowing autumn. The close-time is, therefore, thus curtailed, in 

 fact, eighteen days, at the very period when a single day added 

 to it would be of more importance than the whole winter 

 months put together, without any benefit whatever to the 

 fishery, except the saving of a few kelts, which might be other- 

 wise sufficiently protected, and which can be no equivalent for 

 the destruction of the fish, that ought to be reserved for breeders 

 during these eighteen days, or the loss of the winter fish to the 

 proprietors and the public. 



To the owners of the fishery the injustice of the measure is 



