108 SALMON RIVERS OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 



tenance of the physical energies of the people. A half- 

 starved nation is robbed of half its strength ; and cri- 

 minal statistics demonstrate that the public peace and 

 morality have no greater enemy than hunger. 



All this we have been urging for years past in com- 

 munications on the physical condition of the people, 

 and the means of public alimentation. We have been 

 laughed at for our commendation of horse-flesh as a 

 palatable and highly-nutritive article of human diet; 

 but we rejoice to know we have not in vain pointed out 

 our fisheries as an inexhaustible means of supplying the 

 wants of our rapidly -augmenting population. With 

 " Scotch Salmon and Scotch Law" we have made our 

 readers so well acquainted that on that wide field we do 

 not purpose again to enter, until some new legislative 

 movement attracts public attention. We have heard 

 that the Lord Advocate, discouraged by his recent fail- 

 ure to pass an Act regulating Scottish salmon-fisheries, 

 is not disposed at present to trouble himself with that 

 vexed question. But that there will be legislation as 

 to the salmon rivers of England and Wales can hardly 

 be doubted. It will be a scandal if no action follow 

 upon the Report of the Commissioners, whose inquiries 

 have revealed a state of matters demanding the instant 

 consideration of the legislature, if one of our sources of 

 national wealth is not to be wholly destroyed. 



Matters are bad enough with our Scottish rivers, with 

 the exceptions of the Tay and the rivers owned by the 

 Duke of Richmond ; but those of England and Wales 

 are in a state of unproductiveness far more deplorable. 

 Most of us in Scotland know so little about these rivers, 

 even by name, much less as haunts of the salmon, that 

 we are confident our readers will share our surprise at 

 finding the Royal Commissioners reporting upon no less 

 than a hundred and sixty-five. With the solitary ex- 

 ception of X, every letter of the alphabet is represented 

 in the initial letter of some Welsh or English salmon 

 river, once famous, but now shorn of its glory, and 



