SALMON LEGISLA TION IN SCOTLAND. 503 



siderations, or want of public spirit, seem to have full sway, 

 and it is unfortunately too easy to avoid detection in many 

 of the contraventions which are systematically committed. 

 It is more especially difficult to secure the observance by 

 fixed net fishers of the close times, owing first to the diffi- 

 culty of effective supervision, and secondly to the excuses 

 which they so readily bring forward on the score of stress 

 of weather, &c. 



POACHING AND POLLUTIONS. 



We have seen that the 1862 Act entirely omitted the 

 great question of fixed engines, owing to the pressure 

 brought to bear by the lower proprietors. It also left 

 untouched another crying evil, that of poaching, though 

 apparently for no other reason than that this offence was, 

 to some extent at least, already regulated partly by Home 

 Drummond's Act, and by the general Poaching Act of 

 7 & 8 Viet. c. 95. Even if it had been sufficiently regulated 

 by these Acts, which we submit it is not, the omission is 

 part and parcel of the objectionable policy of leaving the 

 whole law on the subject to be gathered from a large 

 number of different sources, which has long prevailed 

 in Scotch salmon fishery legislation, notwithstanding the 

 better example of our neighbours, and which has resulted 

 in the accumulation of a mass of Acts and isolated enact- 

 ments of more or less ancient date, the ultimate effect being 

 to create a totally unnecessary difficulty in ascertaining 

 the exact state of the law, and a confusion and uncertainty 

 in the mind of the investigator as to whether certain Acts 

 are still in force or not. The provisions made with regard 

 to pollutions have proved of little or no use to prevent, 

 or even materially to check, the evil, which has rapidly 

 assumed such gigantic proportions as to threaten, by its 



