CHAPTER I. 



VALUE OF THE SALMON. 

 Property — Employment — Food — Sport. 



There are at least two respects in which the subject 

 of Salmon is important, and two in which it is interesting. 

 It is important commercially, the salmon fisheries forming 

 ancient and valuable property, a large means of employ- 

 ment, and a very considerable supply of food ; somewhat 

 less important as furnishing an old and keenly-relished 

 sport, the privilege of exercising which has become a 

 sort of property superadded to the value for purely 

 commercial uses. It is interesting as involving some 

 of the strangest facts, the most instructive experiments, 

 and the most perplexing mysteries in natural history; 

 and as having within these few years undergone inves- 

 tigation more searching and legislation more vigorous 

 than for centuries before. 



The subject, too, is especially a British, or British- 

 and-Irish one — still more especially a Scottish one. The 

 great majority of countries have by nature been cut 

 oflF from direct interest and from any kind of power 

 in the matter, and no country has an interest at once 

 so great and so imperilled as our own ; for upon few 

 nations has the gift of the king of fish been conferred, 



