OF THE SALMON. 9 



cares. But where are we now? What has become 

 of all the salmon rivers mentioned under the juris- 

 diction of these earls, lords, and town councils? have 

 these rivers dried up and disappeared from the map 

 of the country ? We say certainly not. But the race 

 of salmon then inhabiting these rivers have disap- 

 peared. Yes, the last one of them has been destroyed 

 in more than the half of these rivers, and the other 

 half are fast following. And we have nothing to 

 blame for it but the departure from the wise and well- 

 studied regulations of our forefathers, and the laxity 

 of the Government and all those who ought to watch 

 over the interest of these rivers. The Government 

 turned careless of that part of the national property, 

 and allowed interlopers to intrude and occupy what 

 was the actual right of the Crown ; these interlopers 

 erected illegal machinery on these parts, in direct 

 opposition to the spirit and intention of all the many 

 previous wise acts of the legislature ; and when chal- 

 lenged for doing so, they still persisted, and got part 

 of a famous class of lawyers, who endeavoured to put 

 a new construction on the wise and powerful deeds of 

 our forefathers, under which all rivers were so pros- 

 perous. Some of the reverend class of the country 

 took no ordinary part with the lawyers ; for, when 

 they should have been more creditably employed, we 

 find them wandering by river sides, plucking and 

 examining the piles of grass, searching for sea shells 

 and worms, endeavouring to turn these rivers into 

 sea, so as to get these cursed inventions of fixtures 

 set close to the spawning beds of the salmon. One of 

 our cleverest Scotsmen said, as far back as 1827, that 

 a reverend doctor gave his evidence in favour of 

 stake-nets, just because there was a stake-net close to 

 the manse. I have heard several clergy examined on 

 fishing cases, but I have invariably found them on 



