DESTRUCTION FOR FOOD 153 



This beautiful fish is a native of our deeper lakes, which it 

 entered, a migrant from the sea, at the close of the Ice Age, 

 and where it has been impounded by subsequent changes 

 in the volume of rivers and in the configuration of the surface 

 of the country. The Char is an excellent food fish, and has 

 long been netted in many lochs. I give only one instance 

 of the destruction of Char in Scottish waters. A few years 

 ago, Mr Campbell, a well-known inhabitant of Kirigussie, 

 told me that in his young days (he mentioned about the 

 years 1860 to 18/0), Char were so common in Loch Insh, 

 Inverness-shire, that when they came up the river Spey to 

 spawn a custom peculiar to Loch Insh Char, and probably 

 a relic of the old migratory habit which still characterizes 

 Char in Scandinavia enormous numbers were netted and 

 snared with a simple ring of brass upon a long stick. He 

 himself with two companions, on one occasion netted in 

 the Spey, in a few hours during the night, as many Char as 

 the three fishers could carry home. The fish were pickled 

 with salt and preserved for winter use. Nowadays Char are 

 by no means so plentiful in Loch Insh, and there can be 

 little doubt that the great slaughter regularly inflicted upon 

 them at spawning time has been a cause of their decline. 

 In several other lakes they have been entirely extirpated 

 within the memory of man. 



SHELL-FISHERIES 



The extent to which our coasts have been rifled of their 

 molluscan shell-fish, since the times when the products of 

 the sea-shore formed the staple food supply of our Neolithic 

 forerunners, can scarcely be realized. At the present day, 

 taking 1913, the last completed year before the War, as a 

 standard, Mussels, Clams or Scallops, Periwinkles and a few 

 others to the amount of 126,468 hundredweights valued at 

 .16,662, were gathered on the Scottish coast for food or 

 bait, and to these must be added 1,316,100 Oysters valued 

 at ,4757. Many of our common shell-fish could successfully 

 withstand much greater depletion, but some have been 

 clearly affected by man's destruction. " Hard by the town [of 

 Leith]," wrote Lowther in 1629, " be oysters dragged which 

 go to Newcastle, Carlisle and all places thereabouts, they be 



