142 SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 



of river-keepers, and not look to the annihilation of other pro- 

 perties to save their own purses. Here we have a striking 

 example of Scotch principles of justice embodied into a British 

 Act of Parliament at the instance of Scotch members : Mr 

 Home Druinmond, as a check on the poachers in the Tay and 

 Tweed, deprives the owners of the Thurso, Ness, and other 

 early rivers, of half their properties, and the public of the 

 finest fish. 



In fact, very few foul fish have, at any period, been sent to 

 market from the Scotch rivers, except from those parts of the 

 Tay that are in the immediate neighbourhood of Perth. More, 

 we believe, have been sent from the Tweed alone than from all 

 the rivers in Scotland. It is in the remote parts of the rivers 

 that the greatest number of foul fish are destroyed, and these 

 parts are far from market. Nearly the whole is therefore salted 

 and consumed in the families of the poachers. In the rivers 

 which run through extensive mountainous tracts of sheep 

 pasture, the shepherds are particularly destructive of the breed- 

 ing fish. Lords of the wastes, they act as they please, for there is 

 no eye to see them. The men who are employed by them in 

 smearing their flocks are, accordingly, sent every night to kill 

 the breeding fish, as food for themselves during the smearing 

 operations, and many rivers are thus denuded of breeders. The 

 proprietor of a river in the north sent some river-keepers among 

 those worthies, but they could not procure a hut for shelter, 

 and were obliged to return, the shepherds informing them, that 

 their master had sent instructions, that if any of them should 

 give a night's lodging to a river-keeper they would be dis- 

 charged his service, which, on inquiry, was found to be 

 true. Yet this master of shepherds is a magistrate ; a dis- 

 tributor si justice and an encourager of poaching no rare thing 

 in a northern Scotch magistrate. 



Many of the breeding streams belonging to the Scotch rivers 

 run through lands which are not the property of the owners of 

 the fishery, so that, unless the proprietors of the lands be forced 

 to allow shelter-huts to be erected for the river-keepers, upon 

 payment of a reasonable rent, it is evident that any enactments 

 of the legislature for the preservation of the breeding fish will 



