148 SALMON -FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 



pence per pound, the trouts, in general, were considered of no 

 great value, and in many rivers were given by the owners of 

 the salmon-fishing as a perquisite to their fishermen, whose 

 wages were less in consequence ; but since salmon have been 

 sent in ice to London, the trouts are packed in the boxes with 

 them, and in many rivers form now a considerable item in the 

 produce of the salmon-fishery.* 



A question has lately arisen in the Court of Session relative 

 to the right to these trouts in the salmon rivers, the proprietors 

 of the adjacent lands claiming them as a natural pertinent of 

 their lands ; while the owners of the salmon-fisheries maintain, 

 with somewhat more reason, that they are, on the contrary, a 

 natural pertinent of the salmon-fishery, and have ever been 

 possessed as such in all the salmon rivers in Scotland. The 

 question, like every other relating to the salmon-fishery, is not 

 without its importance to the public, as well as to the indivi- 

 duals concerned, from its tendency to add an additional ob- 

 struction to the improvement of the fishery, since, if it is diffi- 

 cult to prevent poaching even at present, when every person 

 who is found prowling about a river is liable to a fine, by Mr 

 Home Drummond's Act, how much more difficult would it be 

 if a trout-rod were a sufficient passport to all poachers 1 



The destruction of young salmon by trout anglers is well 

 described in the Committee. 



Mr Little is asked 



" Do you consider that the destruction of salmon-fry by anglers 

 is so great as to occasion any serious injury to the fishery?" " I do 

 think it is. There is an immense quantity taken out of the different 

 rivers by anglers, in a state out of which they would be certain to 

 grow to perfection. I have known even boys and children go and 

 kill, in the course of an afternoon, twenty, thirty, and forty dozen. 

 I have known one man kill thirty-five dozen in an afternoon ; and if 

 you take twenty or thirty in a day of those anglers, what an 

 mmense number it comes to !" 



Wilson 



" I have seen, from my own window, upwards of seventy or 



May 13, 1831, reached Billingsgate, from the river Spey, seventy boxes 

 iced fish, whereof thirty were trout, the take of three days, which sold for one 

 hundred and forty pounds. 



