28 ON THE CLOSE SEASON. 



the other. A worse system than the present can- 

 not be : no one then can object to a change which 

 may multiply, but cannot diminish which may 

 improve, but cannot deteriorate that which is 

 indeed already at its worst. I will here mention 

 another fact, which I believe no man will deny, 

 and the reasoning which follows from it is of such 

 a nature as to be absolutely in my mind unanswer- 

 able. It is two-fold: First, the great body of 

 the fish are attracted to the rivers by freshets or 

 floods, for the purposes before stated, after heavy 

 rain. Second, it is notoriously true that no fish can 

 get up the rivers and surmount the barriers placed 

 in their way, by weirs and other obstacles, unless 

 the rivers are swollen by floods. Suppose then the 

 close time should commence on the 1st of Novem- 

 ber (and by that horrible and murderous act, the 

 43 Geo. 3., it is the 15th of November), the fish 

 are ready and waiting to go up the rivers as soon 

 as the grating, and other impediments, are re- 

 moved, but cannot, for want of a flood. Now who 

 shall say that there will be a flood at that critical 

 juncture ; it may not arrive for a month or months 

 after the fish have been, through all the month of 

 October, perishing for want of a means to comply 

 with the laws of Nature, If a flood draws them 

 into a river in October, and they cannot pass the 

 barriers, they are all liable to be caught, though it 

 is the very time when they should be spared. 

 This is not an impossible, a preposterous, or an 

 hypothetical case : it is perfectly likely to happen-, 



