THE SALMON. 141 



and the barbed gaff, one of the most pernicious 

 poaching implements in use, should be absolutely 

 prohibited. Enlarged powers of entry on lands 

 and searching suspicious persons should be given 

 to water-bailiffs and keepers ; and if fine and 

 imprisonment were awarded to the purchaser as 

 well as to the vendor of fish killed out of season 

 to the receiver as well as to the thief we should 

 soon see our rivers, the impurities and obsta- 

 cles being removed, as well stocked with fish as 

 in the days when the mythical apprentice objected 

 to having salmon more than three times a week. 

 No salmon, excepting such as are demonstrably 

 imported from Holland or elsewhere, should be 

 allowed to be sold from 1st November to 1st 

 March ; after that date the sale might be free. 

 No doubt there are plenty of kelts in the river ; 

 but a well-mended kelt is in no respect unwhole- 

 some, and not one person in a thousand knows him 

 from a clean fish. It is absurd to legislate for 

 individuals, and the public would soon learn the 

 difference, though now in ignorance, and in the 

 meantime little harm would result from the destruc- 

 tion of a few tons of what are, after all, for the time, 

 barren fish. 



THE END. 



