75 



What would have been the effects of the Act had it totally 

 transferred the power of taking salmon from the public in gene, 

 ral along a river, and handed it over to individuals at the mouth?* 

 The consequences as to the conduct of the parties so aggrieved 

 would surely have been such as are complained of, open violence, 

 carelessness as to the law, and utter neglect of preservation ? 

 Although a ' sound commercial principle' might have been held 

 up, ordinary justice, the ill effects on the public mind, and the 

 results to the fisheries, would then have been lost sight of. 



Let us suppose Scotland united to Britain under one crown in 

 the sixteenth century, and that the Ked-deer bred in her moun- 

 tains had been accustomed to resort along ' the king's highway/ 

 to feed in the richer commons of England, and to return every 

 winter to the Highlands to multiply their species one thousand 

 fold ; would the rugged Celtce of that country, and their high- 

 spirited chieftains, the predatory borderers, the foresters of 

 Elliot, Graham, and Buccleuch, have aided an Act to preserve 

 them as ' a feast for the citizens' of the metropolis ? Why, it 

 is all Lombard-street to a China orange that the deer- stalker of 

 these days would meet but their ghosts ! Their fate would have 

 been that of the Megaceros Hibernicus, the gigantic Irish elk, 

 whose gaunt skeletons tower in our museums over those of the 

 Scottish stag or the puny English buck. He might, indeed, have 

 been shown their antlers, as the remains of an animal extinct 

 shortly after the passing of an Act in London ' for the regulation 

 of red-deer,' imposing a penalty for killing them in their native 

 hills during the fence-months, but permitting the Sassenach 

 squires to slaughter them by the hundred in their gastronomic 

 perfection. 



Seriously, however, the ' commercial object' is of the first 

 importance, and to be admitted accordingly. The best course 

 to promote it will be that now advocated, the insuring a suffi- 

 cient supply of fish to stock the upper waters,! and such an 



be consumed by their natural enemies, the seals and porpoises Evidence of T. 

 Spring Rice, esq., M.P., 1825. 



In the case of the Shannon an obstacle is presented to the ascent of sal- 

 mon in the great Lax weir, or it might be argued that the effect of a number 

 of their enemies entering an estuary would be to increase the natural tendency 

 of that fish to ascend a river See Sir G. Mackenzie's Paper, 1824. 



The Rev. Dr. Fleming, a naturalist, resident on the estuary of the Tay, gave 

 in evidence the same year that salmon were the prey of marine enemies, and 

 destroyed by them in great quantities. He described the porpoises as proceed- 

 ing in a large herd, consisting of several hundred, and that they seemed to hunt 

 the salmon like a pack of hounds, spreading along the channel and banks. 



* The fishermen consider the Act of Parliament in 1842, handed over to the 



landlords the rights which were then vested in the public Evidence of J. H. 



Talbot, esq., M.P. 



t The l)uke of Sutherland has found it necessary to suspend capture in his 

 great fishings, (his private ownership enabling him to do so, ) and has proclaimed 

 a jubilee for two years to the finny tribe, to recruit the exhausted stock in his 

 rirers. 



