148 SALMON-FISHEEY OP SCOTLAND. 



pence per pound, the trouts, in general, were considered of no 

 great value, and in many rivers were given by the owners of 

 the salmon-fishing as a perquisite to their fishermen, whose 

 wages were less in consequence ; but since salmon have been 

 sent in ice to London, the trouts are packed in the boxes with 

 them, and in many rivers form now a considerable item in the 

 produce of the salmon-fishery.* 



A question has lately arisen in the Court of Session relative 

 to the right to these trouts in the salmon rivers, the proprietors 

 of the adjacent lands claiming them as a natural pertinent of 

 their lands ; while the owners of the salmon-fisheries maintain, 

 with somewhat more reason, that they are, on the contrary, a 

 natural pertinent of the salmon-fishery, and have ever been 

 possessed as such in all the salmon rivers in Scotland. The 

 question, like every other relating to the salmon-fishery, is not 

 without its importance to the public, as well as to the indivi- 

 duals concerned, from its tendency to add an additional ob- 

 struction to the improvement of the fishery, since, if it is difiS- 

 cult to prevent poaching even at present, when every person 

 who is found prowling about a river is liable to a fine, by Mr 

 Home Drummond's Act, how much more difficult would it be 

 if a trout-rod were a sufficient passport to all poachers ? 



The destruction of young salmon by trout anglers is well 

 described in the Committee. 



Mr Little is asked — 



" Do you consider that the destruction of salmon-fry by anglers 

 is so great as to occasion any serious injury to the fishery ?" — " I do 

 thiok it is. There is an immense quantity taken out of the different 

 rivers by anglers, in a state out of which they would be certain to 

 grow to perfection. I have known even boys and children go and 

 kiU, in the coinse of an afternoon, twenty, thirty, and forty dozen. 

 I have known one man kiU thirty-five dozen in an afternoon ; and if 

 you take twenty or thirty in a day of those anglers, what an 

 mmense number it comes to !" 



Wilson — 



" I have seen, from my own window, upwards of seventy or 



* May 13, 1831, reached Billingsgate, from the river Spey, seventy boxes 

 iced fish, whereof thirty were trout, the take of three days, which sold for one 

 hundred and forty pounds. 



