132 SALMON BRITISH AND COLONIAL. 



salrnonicide by the most destructive methods. Great 

 anxiety has always been shown that this should be 

 effected in modes compatible with liberty to the fish to 

 fulfil its generative function in the rivers ; and if it can 

 be shown that there is ground for the general opinion 

 that stake-nets impede the approach of salmon to their 

 natal waters, where they seek to propagate their species, 

 the Legislature ought to care for the common weal, and 

 forbid the use of such nets, even though such prohibi- 

 tion shall injure the pecuniary interests of those who 

 have asserted to themselves the right to use engines 

 lucrative to them, but hurtful to other fishing proprie- 

 tors. 



Stake-nets and bag-nets being the fishing engines 

 most objected to, we may inform some of our uninitiat- 

 ed readers that they are both constructed on the same 

 principle ; the only difference between them being that 

 the one is fixed by stakes and the other by anchors and 

 floated by corks. Stake-nets are always placed on sands, 

 or ground left dry by the receding tide ; but as bag-nets 

 may be set in the deep water, and their leaders extend- 

 ed so as to embrace a whole firth, they are so much the 

 more injurious. So many bag-nets have been placed in 

 the sea near the mouth of the river Don, Aberdeen, 

 that nearly three-fourths of the salmon are, it is said, 

 intercepted before they reach that river, to the manifest 

 injury of the river proprietors. 



It is contended that the public is thus supplied 

 with large quantities of salmon which would not be 

 caught in the rivers, and that therefore the interest of 

 the public demands the use of fixed engines in the 

 sea. Every salmon caught in such engines has within 

 it milt or roe, for the deposition of which, when the 

 proper time arrives, it is impelled to make for some 

 river, where it may be caught with all the certainty 

 that can be desired by those not desiring the extermin- 

 ation of its species. 



The more salmon caught at sea, the fewer can there 



