"STATUTE LAWS RELATING TO 



use of improper engines and erections to prevent 

 tlje spawn from descending the rivers. And here 

 again it is extraordinary, that the fire, the light, 

 and the white object, should be secondly men- 

 tioned, when they are only applied for the purpose 

 of attracting the old fish. What then can lights 

 have to do with the fry, or their passage down the 

 rivers ? The whole of this section does extremely 

 little good to the cause, and is not very intelligible 

 either; for the magistrates do not know how to 

 frame a conviction by it. Taken in any sense, it 

 is nugatory and useless. It is very true that sal- 

 mon ought neither to be destroyed by lime nor by 

 arsenic, and they are as often taken by the one as 

 trie other : but who will eat fish rendered putrid 

 by poison? for lime corrupts and {nitrifies the 

 whole animal mass ; it acts upon a fish, as any one 

 who chuses to take the pains may, at any time, see 

 it act upon a snail ; it turns the whole body yellow 

 and corrupt. The offence, then, of destroying 

 salmon by lime, is little more than imaginary. The 

 young fry certainly ought not to be thus destroyed, 

 nor are they ; neither ought they to be obstructed 

 in going to the sea, nor are they, but in a very 

 partial way ; for if they were, there could be no 

 salmon. This rant, then, about destroying and 

 obstructing the spawn, is a mere outcry about 

 nothing. Those who imagine that the decay of 

 the salmon fisheries proceeds from the destruction 

 of the fry, or the barriers which prevent them 

 from going to the sea, know very little about the 



