94 Appendices to Thirty-fifth Annual Report 



and do not have the same long-continued scouring action. Fish have 

 less time in which to ascend to the upper reaches, especially if barriers 

 of any kind are erected by man. Actual rainfall may not also be so great 

 as formerly. Pollutions have certainly increased, and are still increasing 

 slowly, unostentatiously, but surely. 



With all these factors in addition to the netting, the salmon stock is 

 declining. 



If these contributory factors were not present, the existing netting 

 could, in all probability, be carried on without injury to the stock. It 

 would be completely unjust to reduce the netting rather than these other 

 injurious agencies, if, as I most strongly believe, these other agencies are 

 chiefly the result of thoughtless disregard to the interest of others, or some 

 stupid idea that to do anything in the interests of salmon fishing is to 

 benefit the wealthy sportsman. We very greatly need sound regulative 

 treatment of these agencies which operate needlessly against our salmon stock. 

 The broad lines of what may be called the policy attempted in Scotland 

 are that the sea is the place for the net, the river for the rod and for the 

 spawning of the fish. 



The interests of quite a large number of manufacturing industries are 

 against the fisheries ; the enormous increase in the abstraction of water to 

 towns is against the fisheries ; the very improvements introduced in modern 

 civilised life are against the fisheries; and, most unfortunately, it seems 

 commonly to be considered that because waste products from distilleries, 

 wool mills, paper mills, iron works, and nowadays even munition works, 

 are inevitable, it is necessary to pollute and to injure our fisheries. 1 

 desire to urge, as strongly as any words of mine can, that this is a mistaken 

 idea, quite uneconomical and unscientific, and that at any rate the great 

 majority of cases might be dealt with so as to allow full scope to the 

 industries and at the same time provide against injury to the purity of 

 our rivers, to any serious extent. There is great difficulty, I admit, in 

 dealing with long-established polluters, but very much might be saved 

 were the matter reasonably considered, from both sides, before it was 

 allowed to go too far. 



At the present time the Fishery Board for Scotland has absolutely no 

 power whatever to deal with the subject of pollutions, yet it is the authority 

 charged with the supervision of the salmon fisheries. The polluters may 

 themselves be members of a District Fishery Board, and may allow, their 

 own fishery interests to drop, but incidentally they are also allowing all 

 their neighbours to be injured, and the salmon stock to be reduced. 

 Similarly, in the matter of the erection of obstructions in rivers which pre- 

 vent or hinder the ascent of salmon, the Fishery Board are powerless. It 

 may be to the interest of a dominating party in a District Board to keep 

 the fish below the obstructions, or some industrial enterprise may have 

 arisen in which they are financially interested. The general well-being of 

 the fisheries must suffer ; and such injuries are not temporary. A serious 

 pollution does not get better, or a weir less steep as time goes on. Slowly 

 these things appear, but they come to stay. 



If a District Board does not perform the function for which it was 

 brought into being, the Central Board have no power. They must exercise 

 their superintendence " without prejudice to or interference with the 

 powers of District Boards." 



Then, in the matter of both pollution and obstructions, such acute local 

 differences are apt to arise over injury to fisheries that the Courts are ap- 

 pealed to, and large sums of money spent. 1 have observed not a few cases 

 where disputants had to go to law simply because there was no properly or 

 adequately constituted authority to whom points connected with the best 



