1 8 SALMON FISHERIES 



Thames, it might be restricted to the district above 

 Oxford, with an area of about 600 square miles, 

 which we will assume would produce as much pure 

 water as would supply the wants of London within a 

 third of the distance of the proposed supply fr< m the 

 sources of the Severn, and at a probable saving of 

 millions of outlay, and would create a salmon fishery 

 on the Thames without inflicting an injury on the 

 Severn salmon fisheries. 



The Metropolis would thus be supplied from the 

 sources of its own river : on the contrary, if it was 

 thought desirable to retain the mill weirs on the lower 

 Thames, there are only 61 dams on the main river, 

 between Oxford and London, and by adopting Mr. 

 FfennelPs calculation, fish passes might be placed 

 over these for 60 each, making an outlay of 3,660, 

 and thereby enable the salmon to go to Oxford and 

 the upper Thames streams beyond, so soon as the 

 upper part of the river was relieved of its ruinous 

 navigation, and enable them to spawn in streams ex- 

 tending over an area of 600 square miles an extent 

 of breeding ground nearly equal to that of the Wye. 

 One very important question still remains to be 

 considered. I allude to such rivers as still possess 

 some salmon, but where they have been, so nearly, 

 destroyed by having been shut out from their natural 

 spawning ground for fifty years by impassable weirs, 

 that the quantity has become so far diminished that 

 the licence duties are perfectly inadequate both to 

 protect the fish and to construct passes for them over 

 the weirs no fish and no funds such, for instance, 

 as the Humber and its tributaries, with an area of 

 9,661 square miles, of which area not more than 

 2,200 square miles, on the Ouse, the Trent, and 

 Derwent, are accessible to the salmon, with a still 

 greater limit to their breeding ground, and of which 

 there are many similar cases, but to a smaller extent, 



