130 SALMON BRITISH AND COLONIAL. 



wants of the public, or to relinquish my retail trade. I 

 had, therefore, to send sea-caught salmon a distance 

 of thirty-two miles. I had to send the Aberdeen river- 

 caught fish to London in ice. Preserved-provision 

 curers will not take river fish if they can get sea fish 

 to preserve." In corroboration of this statement, Mr 

 Hector annexes letters from two salmon-boilers of long 

 experience, which we should more highly value if they 

 had not so much the look of being made up according 

 to order. Though the one be dated " County -Mayo, 

 Ireland," and the other "Aberdeen," they are almost 

 precisely in the same words, and these so peculiar as 

 to generate the suspicion that both have the same 

 origin. 



We can easily believe that salmon from the upper 

 waters of the Dee, if not despatched immediately, and 

 not packed in ice, would not be so palatable to Aber- 

 deen epicures as fish caught in the sea ; and we are 

 aware that salmon which have been several weeks in 

 a river sensibly deteriorate. But again and again we 

 have caught and eaten salmon on the Tay, thirty miles 

 above the estuary, of the highest excellence ; and, from 

 personal knowledge, we aver that salmon travel this 

 distance in the time betwixt Saturday night and Mon- 

 day morning. In Mr Mackenzie's 'View of the Salmon- 

 Fishery of Scotland ' we find the following remarks on 

 the idea that salmon taken in stake-nets are of a better 

 quality than those taken in rivers: "They might be 

 better than what used to be formerly taken in the higher 

 parts of rivers after they had remained long in them; 

 but they cannot possibly be better than what is caught 

 in the tide-way of the rivers, where nine-tenths of the 

 fish are now taken. We would defy the most fastidious 

 palate to discover a difference between them, or to dis- 

 tinguish the one from the other on the table. Mr Little, 

 who was a great stake-net fisher, does not consider that 

 there is any difference between a salmon taken in the sea 

 or in a river, provided he is taken soon after he enters 



