?() Tliirtij-.sLiih Annual Mcelin;/ 



ure. A? every inscrit has a right to fisli, witli net and cobh'. 

 witliout ])ayiii<i- any fee, anrl as there arc. in fact, scarcely any 

 liiiiiialions to this privilege, one may well imagine the results. 

 'i'hc Xoi'iiiandy salmon, formerly so abundant, aix? nearly extinct. 

 Ill ili'ittaiiy. wlierc up to a hundi'cd years ago they still were 

 iiioi'c than abundant, there are now few rivers in which the fish 

 is still to lie found. "Tn the Gironde and its tributaries salmon 

 are now a rarity, while in the district of the Loire itself (the 

 area of whose basin amounts to no less than sunO hhiglish miles) 

 the yield has fallen in the last fifteen years to such an extent that 

 the proportion now is but one to twenty then. 



The French Government, no doubt, is largely responsible for 

 this state of things. Before 1897 inland fisheries wei'c under 

 supervision and control of the Fonts et Chaussees Department. 

 After that date they passed into the hands of the Department of 

 Forests. On the whole, one may say, the change did not prove 

 altogether successful. To the foresters, just as to the engineers, 

 piscatorial matters remain a secondary part of their l)usiness. 

 and therefore receive from them little or no attention. And 

 experts say that so long as a special fisheries department is not 

 created in France, there is not much hope for the better manage- 

 ment of rivers. 



Politics have also sadly interfered, as usual, in the question. 

 France is the land of universal suifrage, and this suffrage has al- 

 ways had a strong inclination to regard all matters not from the 

 standpoint of general but of private and local interest. And as 

 in fishery matters it is impossible to promote the one withoitt in- 

 fringing more or less on the other, it follows that Parliament ha- 

 always shown itself not at all anxious to discuss these matters 

 anew, the more so, perhaps, since the great majority of its mem- 

 bers know nothing about them. Amongst the French Eadicals, 

 also, there has been, and there is still, a strong prejudice against 

 shooting and fishing rights, which are considered more or less as 

 remnants of the feudal system. For these reasons the fishery 

 question has played a very small ])art in the preoccupations of 

 both chambers since 1821), in which year was promulgated the 

 law that is still the basis of fishing and angling regulations in 

 France. 



Some change, however, has been of late happily noticeable 



