FIXED ENGINES. 221 



the legality of fishing weirs, and causing illegal ones to 

 be abated, was conferred on certain Special Commissioners, 

 whose office (as having fully performed its purposes) was 

 abolished in 1873.* 



2. As to modes of fishing. 



Closely connected with the use of weirs to take salmon 

 is the use of " fixed engines," that is, nets or other con- 

 trivances fixed to the bed or banks of a river, or in 

 any way set in the river, so to speak, as a trap, for the 

 purpose of catching fish or assisting in their capture. 

 Evidently the prohibition " of taking fish by weirs would 

 lose much of its effect if they might be taken by other 

 self-acting devices permanently set in the river, though 

 not amounting, like a continuous weir, to a total obstruc- 

 tion of the fish's passage. Indeed, a fishing weir may 

 be described as only the most complete and therefore 

 most mischievous form of fixed engine, though for legal 

 purposes it is not covered by that term. The other means 

 that can be used are various ; the chief of them are 

 specified in the definition clause of the Act of 1861, by 

 which " fixed engine " is made to include, for the purposes 

 of the Act, "stake-nets, bag-nets, putts, putchers, 2 and 

 all fixed implements or engines for catching or for facili- 

 tating the catching of fish." The Act of 1865 (s. 39) 

 extended the term to "include any net or other imple- 



1 36 Viet. c. 13. 



2 Putts and putchers are large conical basket-traps for fish, something 

 like a much elongated lobster-pot. The legal reader may be referred 

 to L. R. 3 Q. B. 156, 643, for information as to their structure : there 

 is also an account of them in Mr. Buckland's evidence before the 

 Select Committee of 1869, and specimens are shown in the Exhibition 

 by the Severn Fisheries Board. They are used only in the estuary of 

 the Severn. 



