AND ANGLING SONGS. 381 



fishers, was inconsistent with the duties, if not ultra vires of the 

 Commission. Their interference with this bait, the lengthened 

 investigation that took place with respect to it, arose solely from 

 its connexion with the interests of the Salmon Fisheries, and 

 proceeded on the assumption that the ova, of which the prepara- 

 tion used by anglers was made up, were derived solely from foul 

 or black fish, salmon, in fact, on the eve of spawning. It was 

 an article in consequence that could be brought into the market 

 only through the intervention of the salmon poacher. To this 

 assumption, ignorantly formed, we owe, I am inclined to think, 

 Section xn. of the General Act. There can be no doubt that 

 the chief supply of this article in the English market, was, at the 

 date of the inquiry, received from poaching districts in the south 

 of Scotland. Hawick, Peebles, and G-alashiels contributed each 

 its quota but it by no means follows that the salmon-roe for- 

 warded from these quarters was of the best description, or that 

 an inviting preparation can only be procured from the ripe and 

 unwholesome baggits of the close-time. On the contrary, the 

 salmon-roe most serviceable as an angling bait, in the shape of 

 paste, was wont to be prepared from the ova of seasonable fish, 

 such salmon as are usually taken in the months of September 

 and October, the pellets of which are red, and of a rich uniform 

 consistency, devoid of shell, and having no sanguinary matter 

 intermixed with them, whereas the ova of the ripe baggits are 

 watery in their appearance, have lost their fine carnelian hue, 

 and are incrusted with a shell or husk which refuses to amalga- 

 mate properly with the common salt used in the preparation. In 

 fact, the salmon-roe of the poaching districts taken from fish in the 

 spawning stage, is just as inferior an article of its kind, contrasted 

 with the salmon-roe taken from good marketable fish, captured 

 by net or rod some weeks at least before the expiry of the open 

 season, as is the soft tasteless flesh of the salmon plundered from 

 the breeding grounds in December or January, compared with 



