157 



CHAPTER VIII 



POACHING 



THE best friend of the salmon is undoubtedly the 

 fair rod fisherman. Only a modest gleaning falls to 

 his lot out of the ample harvest of the stream ; yet he 

 does far more for the protection of the crop than the 

 tenant of the net fishing, who, like a thriftless farmer 

 who exhausts the soil of his fields, too often looks only 

 to the immediate present, and leaves a wasted heritage 

 to those who come after him. I have, however, said 

 ni)' say upon the legal destruction of our salmon 

 fisheries, and will now devote a few pages to some of 

 the many illegal methods by which fish are destroyed. 

 The time-honoured pastime of ' burning the 

 water ' is, I fear, by no means obsolete, although 

 the law prevents its being carried on so openly as in 

 the days of Scrope and Sir Walter Scott. The vivid 

 description in '(iuy Mannering ' must be familiar to 

 most of my readers, and doubtless the ' shirra ' had 

 often taken part in proceedings which his successors 



