105 



these, or any similar devices for so obstructing the passage of 

 fish, are required to be given by the Legislature. 



4th. Restrictions as to the use of nets in the fresh water 

 portions of rivers might fairly be made under certain circum- 

 stances. Salmon congregate in great numbers under dams 

 constructed for supplying water to mills and factories, and for 

 navigation, while waiting for floods to carry them over; here they 

 can be taken in quantities by means of nets. Their use might 

 be prohibited within a certain distance of such dams.* 



The right to use nets in fresh water rivers and lakes is fre- 

 quently assumed by owners of reputed 'several' fisheries. The 

 claim to employ sweep-nets, or nets of any description in such 

 places might be restricted on the same grounds that the use of 

 fixed engines is prohibited lower down, unless a long period of 

 use could be shown. 



GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. The Report of the Select Com- 

 mittee closes with the following paragragh: "In concluding 

 their labours your committee desire to record, once for all, their 

 decided conviction, that the wholesale and wasteful destruction 

 of the breeding fish and fry has materially injured the inland 

 fisheries, and has excited, and kept alive, much local discontent ; 

 and demands the immediate attention of Parliament in order to 

 the adoption of such alterations in the existing law as may be 

 found expedient." 



With regard to the prospect of improvement in the Salmon 

 Fisheries, considering that their increased productiveness must 

 be most surely promoted by the protection of the breeding fish 



* Mill-races and wheels are great causes of destruction to fish in both their 

 ascent and descent ; the salmon in ascending swim up the tail-race from whence 

 the water flows from the wheel, and by which they are sometimes struck and 

 killed, or by turning off the water they are left splashing about in a shallow 

 enclosed place, and where they can be readily captured by either gaff or net. 



The fish in their descent, after having spawned, are attracted from the stream, 

 where it diverges from the river into the mill-race, by the depth of the artificial 

 channel, and in attempting to pass down sluices their backs are sometimes 

 broken, or they are beaten to pieces by the wheel. 



One of the Scottish witnesses examined before the Select Committee of 1824 

 stated: "I have seen hundreds of fry lying dead at the bottom of a mill-race, 

 killed by the wheel, and have been told, by people who had seen it, that there 

 were cart loads and baskets full taken up from the mill-races into the mill on 

 the tributary streams of large rivers, and that people actually fed their pigs 

 with them. I have seen them in thousands and tens of thousands in the water 

 in the mill-leads, seeking to go down, but prevented by the dyke across the 

 river, which they could not get over." 



This must be considered a gross abuse of the liberty which millers enjoy of 

 converting a stream, acting as the viaduct of a public kind of property, to their 

 private benefit. 



In Scotland, where from the prevalence of private rights, and national regard 

 to the law, salmon fisheries are sometimes of greater value than the land to which 

 they are attached, doubts have been raised whether the interests of mill owners 

 are superior to those of the owners of such fisheries, and it is advanced that the 

 latter have an equal claim with the former to a consideration of their require- 

 ments of water. 



