SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 149 



eiyhty people angling within the distance of half a mile on the 

 Tweed." 



Proudfoot 



" There are a great many anglers who get liberty from gentlemen 

 to go and fish half-pay officers and others who kill the salmon ; 

 but the greater number are of the lower orders. They say they have 

 a right, by the law of Scotland, to kill trouts. I know some of those 

 fellows who go about with rods in the daytime and observe where 

 the fish lie, and come again in the night with nets and carry them 

 away. This I know to be a fact" 



The Committee ask Mr Little : 



" Do you know that poachers make angling a pretence for observ- 

 ing where the spawning fish are lying on the fords, in order to kill 

 them during the night ?" " I know that is frequently done. I have 

 been told it by the people who practised it, and who afterwards 

 engaged with us as keepers. We find that poachers make the best 

 water-keepers. They tell me that it is the universal practice to go 

 during the day and find where the fish are, and return during the 

 night and kill them." 



Before, then, a right which exposes the rivers to such abuses, 

 and which must prove so detrimental to the salmon-fishery of 

 the country, be established in law, it ought to rest on very 

 CLEAK grounds indeed. When the amusement of angling is 

 granted as a matter of courtesy and it is seldom refused to 

 respectable persons it is not often abused ; but if claimed as a 

 right, there would be no check on its abuse, except by a con- 

 stant recurrence to the courts of law, which, as law is at pre- 

 sent administered in this country, is of itself an evil of no 

 little magnitude. It is, therefore, a claim so destructive in its 

 effects, that it ought to be resisted by the owners of the salmon- 

 fishery to the uttermost. We may perhaps be told that the 

 Scotch land-owners are too liberal-minded, too generous, too 

 liigh-souled, to permit such abuses on their properties. No 

 doubt they are so. They would give themselves a great deal 

 of trouble, put themselves to a great deal of expense, prosecute 

 even their own tenants, where they had no interest in the 

 matter, or were on bad terms with the owner of the salmon- 

 fishery, to preserve HIS property. They would never kill the 



