OF ENGLAND, 21 



rivers cannot always be controlled by the same gen- 

 eral rule, there can be little doubt that gjreat improve- 

 ments may be made by modifying the law in various 

 localities according to the natural capabilities of the 

 rivers of the United Kingdom, which have now been 

 for the first time carefully inquired into and reported 

 upon by the Royal Commissioners and Inspectors of 

 Fisheries. 



On the Severn the Commissioners inform us that 

 the area is 4,437 square miles, and Mr. Alexander 

 Miller informs us that there are 668 miles of streams 

 with seventy- three mill weirs. 



These seventy-three owners of mills we will assume 

 obstruct a tenth part of the bed of the river by means 

 of weirs placed across the stream, all of which to a 

 greater or less degree exclude the salmon from their 

 spawning ground, and destroy it by converting it 

 into deep pools ; and whilst obstructing the river for 

 water power destroy their own salmon fishery as well 

 as that of nine-tenths of the other proprietors of the 

 river, who have no interest in the mills, and whose 

 salmon fisheries in these rivers were protected for 

 upwards of five centuries, until 1861. Thus at 

 least nine-tenths of the salmon fishery proprietors 

 of the Kingdom were sacrificed for the benefit 

 of the other tenth, viz. the mill owning proprietors, 

 and the nation lost food worth nearly half a million 

 a-year when compared with the produce of Scotch 

 and Irish rivers, of which the Commissioners say ; 

 " They are not superior in natural capabilities to 

 England and Wales, and at the present moment far 

 more productive." It is estimated that a sum of 

 .2,000 would make the seventy-three mill weirs on 

 the river Severn passable to salmon, and would prob- 

 ably yield an increased return of food to the country 

 from these 4437 square miles of at least 40,000 a-year, 

 to the mutual benefit of both the owners of mills who 

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