APPENDIX. 99 



season. This feeling, however, on my part, is not with- 

 out its alloy, for I know right well how destructively killing 

 salmon so late in the season tells on the quantities of that 

 matchless fish in future years. In saying this, however, 

 I do not so much allude to the comparatively few which 

 rod-fishers take, as to the havoc and devastation which is 

 made over all Scotland among the breeding fish by bag- 

 nets and stake-nets in the sea, and by cruives, and raft- 

 nets, and other contrivances in the rivers, during the last 

 four weeks of the season as presently fixed. 



" I have long been sensible of the untold extent of the 

 destruction of sdmon inflicted under the present laws; 

 and that this most mischievous loss of a highly valuable 

 and nearly costless food has been immensely increased and 

 aggravated by the use of the bag-nets and stake-nets now 

 closely placed over all the coasts of the mainland and 

 islands. The destruction formerly by the use of cruives 

 and nets late in the year, was no doubt bad enough; but 

 only a drop in the bucket as compared with the above 

 inventions and appliances, which, literally speaking, now- 

 a-days leave no part of the waters, whether fresh or salt, 

 as a place of safety for the early-breeding fish, which all 

 practical men admit to be the best and surest for multi- 

 plying the species. 



" But as example is better than precept, and as I my- 

 self happen to be a rod-fisher, I will shortly exemplify 

 the effects of the present law on early breeding salmon. 

 I went yesterday to fish in the river Carron, which falls 

 into the Dornoch frith, where the counties of Ross and 

 Sutherland meet at Bonar Bridge. The banks showed 

 evidently by the footmarks along them, that the river had 

 been closely fished before my arrival, and left but little 

 prospect of much sport ; and it so happened that I had 

 not a rise till past four o'clock, after which I raised four 

 fish in very shallow water, slightly hooking two, and 

 killing one of the others, a small female grilse of only 

 five pounds weight, nearly one pound of which was of roe, 

 already grown about the size of No. 2. shot; and this, 

 be it remembered, in a small- grilse, which many self- 

 complacent and very learned sportsmen insist are not 

 breeders, although ,all really practical men, whether fishers 

 H 2 



