198 



Now, it is important to observe that the interests and duties of 

 these two sets of proprietors are not only different, but adverse 

 to each other. Each set, of course, wishes to capture as many 

 salmon as they can. For this purpose the lower proprietors wish 

 to detain the fish in the lower parts of the river by allowing or 

 tolerating obstructions, natural or artificial, which prevent the fish 

 ascending to the higher reaches. On the other hand, the upper 

 proprietors desire the removal of such obstructions j and especially 

 as the expense of removing them would fall chiefly on the lower 

 proprietors, on account of their larger rentals. Many examples 

 of contention on this account, between the two sets of proprietors, 

 are afforded by the answers from several of the Districts. 



In these conflicts the lower proprietors generally can outnumber 

 the upper proprietors ; as even though one of the former should 

 be absent from a meeting, the chairman naturally sides with them, 

 and he has a casting as well as a deliberating vote. 



In the answers from the Boards, it is frankly admitted that, 

 each set of proprietors generally fight on behalf of their own 

 individual interests, and that the interests of the public are over- 

 looked. Whilst it is the object of each set of proprietors to 

 catch as many fish as they can, it is the interest of the public, 

 that the numbers caught should not be so great as to exter- 

 minate the stock, on the well-recognised principle, that profits 

 ought to come out of yearly dividends, and not out of capital. 



It is, however, only fair to the Boards to add, that many of 

 them, as if sensible of the almost unavoidable tendency of 

 members to attend chiefly to the interests of their own parts 

 of the river, suggested that, instead of Boards, there should be 

 inspectors, appointed by Government, with ample powers to 

 devise and carry out measures of management which the Boards, 

 constituted as they were, found themselves unable to adopt. 



Perhaps it may be asked, why should there have been so 

 complete a failure of protection by means of local Boards in 

 Scotland, when a similar system of Boards prevails successfully 

 in England and Ireland ? 



On the other hand, it is not incorrect to affirm, that even in 

 England and Ireland the action of the River Conservators has 



