RECENT RESEARCH UPON SALMON 233 



incumbent upon those who hold his view to prove — first, that 

 spent salmon are physically capable of doing the alleged 

 mischief; and secondly, that they have been detected in the 

 act. As to the last, there is the negative testimony of Mr. 

 T. G. Thompson, printed in the Fifteenth Annual Report of 

 the English Salmon-Fisheries Inspectors : — 



*' During the past two springs I have carefully watched kelts 

 and smolts when congregated in very large numbers in the same 

 pool above a weir, where they were imprisoned on account of 

 there not being enough water to take them over the sill of the 

 weir. The smolts were swimming peaceably about and without 

 harm among the kelts, as if fully aware that the cannibal in- 

 stincts attributed to their full-grown relations were not to be 

 feared by them in the least." 



Probably, of all the legal enactments for the preservation of 

 salmon, except those securing a free passage over obstructions, 

 none has done more to palliate the results of excessive net- 

 fishing than the protection afforded to kelts during the last 

 forty years. It has been the chief means of saving a stock of 

 mature fish in such rivers as have not been specially managed 

 in the interests of angling. 



Kelts, although unseasonable fish, are mature salmon ; the 

 more of these that are allowed to return to the sea, the greater 

 the chance of some of them revisiting the rivers, increased 

 in size. It was, therefore, not unreasonable in those who 

 successfully advocated the protection of kelts, to predict an 

 increase in the maximum weight of fish captured. The 

 prediction has been amply fulfilled. It will hardly be disputed 

 that salmon, especially spring and summer fish, were far more 

 numerous in the Tweed sixty years ago than they are now. 

 Except in unusually wet seasons, when a succession of floods 

 enable fish to run past the nets in the estuary and lower 

 reaches, the spring rod-fishing in that once famous river is now 

 of small account ; and as for summer angling, it is practically at 

 an end. Yet there has been a notable increase in the weights 



