502 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND 



witnessed the settling of a dispute regarding the fishery of the 

 Manor of Beethom, originally bestowed on the Derby family by 

 Eichard I. It may suffice to say that the lord of the manor 

 won his claim to the Salmon caught in the river, and to nothing 

 else. But the story of the rights and counter rights that have 

 been held and claimed, and fought and lost, is too tedious for 

 general readers. One finding of an inquisition regarding the 

 Eden shall alone obtain place here : ' Also we present that it 

 hath been used to have a Water Court for the reforming of all 

 wrongs in the said water of Eden, or of taking young of fry, 

 called white trouts, or for fishing with nets of so small a mesh/ x 

 All forfeitures were to be extracted and answered to the Lord, 

 and the said Court ' was used to be kept at such times as the 

 Stewart thought by complaints it was needful, but not other- 

 wise, certainly every year.' Here I may remark that our 

 shrewd north countrymen employed mechanical means for 

 ascertaining the growth of young Salmon more than two 

 centuries ago. Our information on this point is to be found in 

 a letter which Mr. Johnson of Brignall wrote to John Bay on 

 April 16, 1677 : 'In the Mouth of Eden, in Cumberland,' says 

 Johnson, ' the Fishers have four distinctions of yearly growth 

 (after the first Summer, when they call them Free or Frie, as we 

 Smowts or Smelts) before they come to be Laches; and this they 

 say they have curiously observed by fixing so many Pins in the 

 Fins of Yearlings, or two Years old, and after taking them again.' 2 

 It seems not unreasonable to infer from Johnson's expression — 

 ' curiously observed,' that this marking of fish was at that time 

 a novel practice, if not actually first developed in Cumberland. 



Of the numerous engines employed upon our estuaries from 

 medieval times for capturing Salmon, I cannot attempt to speak 

 at length. They varied at different seasons, but were principally 

 stake-nets. The ' Haf ' net, still employed by the fishermen of 

 Bowness on Solway, was in use in the thirteenth century, and 

 consisted of a net fastened to a pole of eleven or twelve feet in 



1 This is quoted by the late Mr. Nanson, as reported in the Carlisle 

 Journal of April 13, 1877. The late Town-Clerk of Carlisle does not seem 

 to have furnished any date for this interesting inquisition. 



2 Correspondence of John Ray, p. 142. 



