DECEMBER 283 



deenshire Dee, and some of the smaller streams in the far 

 north, where proprietors have realised the superior har- 

 vest to be reaped by preserving their waters for angling, 

 instead of letting them, at competitive rents, to netters, 

 the combined greed and ingenuity of man is on the point 

 of overcoming the extraordinary fecundity of the finest 

 of our food fishes, the noblest of our sporting ones. 

 Would we avert the fate impending on our salmon 

 fisheries, there is no course open to us but to follow the 

 recommendations of the Royal Commission on Tweed 

 and Solway. These two estuaries, naturally more pro- 

 ductive of salmon than almost any others, have fared 

 worse than any, owing to causes connected with a 

 historical source. In the long centuries of Border 

 warfare, each country encouraged its people to inflict 

 the utmost damage on the fishings of the other. The 

 Scots had no inclination to preserve salmon in the 

 upper waters of the Tweed and Esk for the advantage 

 of English nets at Berwick and Netherby. Hence, not 

 only have the rivers of these districts remained to this 

 day, as above mentioned, under statutes distinct from 

 those affecting the rest of the two kingdoms, but the 

 inhabitants, especially on the eastern watershed, have 

 inherited an incorrigible aptitude for illegal fishing. 

 The statutory close time for nets in the Tweed begins 

 three weeks later than on nearly all the other rivers ; 

 no sooner are the legal nets off than the estuary is 

 harried by poachers plying the deadly hang-net, and 

 the autumn run of spawning fish is intercepted on its 

 way to the upper waters. Those that do escape find 



