150 THE RELATIONS OF THE STATE WITH 



Many similar enactments followed, some with a general 

 application to the whole country and all kinds of fish, 

 others limited to particular rivers or localities on the sea- 

 coast and to certain specified fish, especially salmon and 

 Salmon and eels. Of these the most interesting are those relating to 



other fisheries 



in the the Thames, since they not only show the increasing im- 



portance which was attached to the fisheries of the metro- 

 politan river as London grew in population, but they also 

 afford clear evidence that the citizens, having, by the 

 wisdom of their ancestors, freed the navigation, were en- 

 deavouring to improve the fisheries, now become their 

 principal anxiety. In 1394 the "Mayor of London " was 

 (by 17 Rich. II. c. 9) entrusted with special powers to enforce, 

 in the Thames, the laws " touching salmon," and less than a 

 hundred years afterwards (by 4 Hen. VII. c. 15, 1489) he 

 was made the principal conservator of the Thames, with 

 authority to check the destruction of " fry and brood of fish," 

 which were taken " in great multitudes for bait, and also for 

 the feeding of hogs." These Acts were the origin of the 

 large powers still exercised by the Thames Conservators, to 

 whom, by subsequent enactments, the powers of the Lord 

 Mayor and Corporation in this behalf were transferred. The 

 navigation interest, however no longer friendly, but, in the 

 construction of weirs, inimical, to at least the salmon fisheries, 

 has, with the aid of pollutions, exterminated the salmon 

 from the Thames, and the duties of the Thames Conservancy 

 Board, in regard to the fisheries, are chiefly confined to the 

 protection of the interests of anglers for trout and coarse 

 fish in the upper waters. A close season for salmon is 

 still included among the byelaws of the Board, but London 

 sewage and navigation weirs have made a " close season " 

 in the Thames all the year round, not only for salmon 

 fishers, but for the salmon themselves. Nothing could 



