AND ANGLING SONGS. 379 



Agreeing with Mr. Young as to the expediency of holding in 

 check the growth and increase of the common trout in salmon 

 rivers, the question occurs, How, in regard to Tweed, is this to be 

 done ? As for the otter, and its friendliness towards the salmon, 

 displayed in thinning out the enemies of the parr-stock, that is all 

 moonshine ; and in respect to netting river-trout at the end of 

 the spawning season, as Mr. Young proposes, such a device, if 

 carried into execution on the streams of our Borderland, would 

 call forth an indignant protest from the whole of the angling frater- 

 nity. It will be said by some, who know nothing of Tweed and 

 its altered condition as a river, ' Surely the trout-fishers them- 

 selves, and they are numerous enough in all conscience, keep a 

 sufficient check upon these depredators ? ' Allowed. They do their 

 best, and as regards the tributaries and upper parts of Tweed, 

 prove highly serviceable, notwithstanding the notions of many of 

 them about the parr, in thinning the large trout. But from Mel- 

 rose downwards, if not from a much higher point, all the way* to 

 Norham, the trout-fisher, during the fly-fishing season, has but rare 

 opportunities now-a-days of doing execution, the river is so sel- 

 dom in trim, and when so, not in its wider portions to be com- 

 passed ; the trout, too, numerous beyond all calculation, have 

 become so fastidious and so uncertain, compared with what they 

 were wont to be, in their feeding hours. This is one, among the 

 many evil effects of over-drainage, etc., which are discovering 

 themselves in our Border valley, and threaten, in teeth of the 

 most wholesome salmon legislation that can possibly be adopted, 

 the conversion of our noble river, stage by stage, into a Styx or 

 an Acheron. 



In assisting the river-trout and erioces eventually to obtain the 

 mastery over the salares or true salmon, I cannot help thinking 

 that the application to Tweed of that section of the General Act, 

 which prohibits the use and possession, for fishing purposes, of 

 salmon-roe, will have an effect. In my judgment it was a mistake, 



