66 THE FATURAL HISTORY AND HABITS 



female salmon works with a male grilse the impreg- 

 nation must be to that proportion deficient. We see 

 several accounts to the contrary of this ; for we see it 

 stated that the milt of one male is sufficient to im- 

 pregnate the ova of several hundreds of females, but 

 saying is not doing, and before we place implicit 

 confidence in such statements we require a proof posi- 

 tive, and I fear that those who work according to that 

 theory will find an awful deficiency at counting-out 

 time. 



I will now conclude this account of the habits of 

 the salmon with a few practical observations on the 

 necessary management and preservation of rivers. 

 In the first place, as I have already stated, the first 

 and greatest object to be obtained, is to give the fish 

 the full and natural close time provided for them by 

 nature ; give them the seed-time and harvest suitable 

 to their circumstances, and not by ill-considered 

 enactments try to force their summer into winter*, 



* The later in the season that we continue our open or fishing 

 season, to the same extent we drive back the spawning time into the 

 winter, and also to the same extent we curtail or reduce our early 

 salmon fishings. Since adding three weeks to the latter end of 

 the fishing season, the early rivers have gradually become worse and 

 worse, until now they have arrived at a state scarcely worth fish- 

 ing. The Tweed Act allows the net to be used regularly on to 

 the 15th of October, being one month later than the other rivers 

 in Scotland. Being the border river, although one of the best in 

 the kingdom, or rather in the two kingdoms, for it is half Scotch 

 and half English, it has been always unfortunate ; for the Scots 

 poached the one side, and the English poached the other. Its 

 close and open time always varied from other well regulated 

 rivers, and yet the Tweed laws are radically wrong from top to 

 bottom. They are so much so that they have turned that famous 

 river, whose natural capabilities are unrivalled by any river in 

 Europe, into a mere fishery of bulltrouts and grilses, and the 

 spawning season is driven back to February and March, when 



