172 



declaration of their illegality in MAGNA CHARTA, where it is ordained, 

 ' Omnes kidelli deponantur de caetero penitus per Tharnesiam et Med- 

 weyam, et per totam Angliam, nisi per costeram maris.' 



" Where such engines exist, by any supposed right which a court of 

 law would sustain, the other proprietors of fishings in the rivers should 

 be furnished with a power to remove them upon payment of the value 

 of the proven rent during fifteen or twenty years; and while in exer- 

 cise, they should be restrained to the margin of the stream, so that a 

 third or a half of the channel should at all times be free from obstruc- 

 tion." 

 ********** * 



11 Human ingenuity, we have seen, has been exhibited in the use of 

 various engines to secure Salmon after they have entered the rivers; 

 nor have devices been wanting to effect their capture while yet in 

 stations under the influence of the tide. It has been stated that Salmon, 

 when they leave their unknown haunts in deep water, approach the 

 coast, and enter the estuaries, and there remain, moving about in shoals 

 under the influence of the tide, until the rivers are in suitable state to 

 receive them. To attempt to capture fish, in such situations, by the 

 movable net, would be a wasteful expenditure of labour. In a river, 

 this (movable) engine, if of sufficient size, gives the industrious fisher- 

 man a full command of the stream, especially if he arranges his re- 

 sources so as to be sending out one net while he is hauling in another, 

 as the proprietors of the more inland streams feel to their cost. In the 

 estuary, and on the sea- shore, the varying depth of the water, the 

 inequalities of the bottom, the comparatively limited space which the 

 net encloses, and, above all, the frequent swell of the water, lifting the 

 net from the bottom, and giving to the fish a ready way to escape, 

 offer such obstacles to the movable net as to render it, in such sta- 

 tions, almost a useless engine. The method, which had so frequently 

 presented itself to savage tribes, of employing a net to act by the ebb- 

 ing and flowing of the tide, appears to have been in use on the British 

 shores from an early period. It is the kid-el referred to in Magna 

 Charta, and the nowts mos piscandi of Hector Boece. By means of 

 upright posts fixed in the sand, and extending from the shore to low 

 water mark, nets are kept suspended and stretched, so as to direct the 

 fish, moving with the tide, into suitable courts or labyrinths, where 

 they are detained and left accessible to the fisher, on the ebbing of the 

 tide. These tide-nets, which in Scotland have obtained the denomina- 

 tion of stake-nets, capture both the fish moving into the estuary with the 

 flood, and those moving out of the estuary with the ebb-tide. The 

 fish which these nets entangle are in the best possible state, having 

 recently arrived from deep water, and they are in a situation to be 

 conveyed to the market in the speediest manner. Yet, in spite of the 

 antiquity of this method of fishing, and its obvious efficiency, there are 

 not wanting individuals who long for its abolition, and who wish it to 

 be declared unlawful for a proprietor of fisheries on the sea coast to 

 employ the tide to his advantage. Before, however, discussing this 

 branch of the question, it may be necessary to inquire into the restric- 

 tions at present imposed by law on these tide-nets, and to what extent 

 they may be employed, without injuring the public interests of the 

 Fisheries. 



