18 



Appendices to Seventh Annual Report 



allowing District Boards to elect their own chairman, irrespective of rental ; 

 for prohibiting netting within a certain distance above and below dam- 

 dikes ; for further regulating and restricting the construction and working 

 of stake, fly, and bag nets \ and for altering estuary lines ; would, almost 

 certainly, be rejected.* 



ILLICIT TRAFFIC IN SALMON FEOM SCOTLAND TO 

 FOREIGN MARKETS. 



Although we are not to have a general Salmon Fisheries Bill during 

 the present session of Parliament, it would certainly be very desirable, 

 and greatly for the benefit of the Scotch Salmon Fisheries, as well as 

 agreeable to both upper and lower proprietors, to pass a short, sharp, 

 and simple bill to prevent 'scringing' and other forms of salmon 

 poaching which at present result in an immense illicit traffic in Scotch 

 salmon to the home market, and to England, France, and elsewhere. 

 It need only be a short bill, and if properly drawn, so as to amend 

 the deficiencies in the existing salmon fishery legislation in Scotland, 

 it would soon prevent, or at least greatly diminish, this illegal traffic, 

 which has now assumed almost gigantic proportions owing to the 

 inefficiency of the present Salmon Fishery Acts. Probably more than 

 100 tons of unseasonable salmon are annually sent to England, France, 

 and elsewhere from Scotland. In Scotland, the powers of search 

 and seizure possessed by water-bailiffs, constables, officers of district 

 boards, &c, have proved utterly inadequate to check the evil. What 

 is chiefly wanted are powers of search and seizure in the case of unseasonable 

 salmon, such as are conferred with regard to game, by the second section 

 of the Poaching Prevention Act of 27th August 1862; the prohibition 

 of the sale, offering for sale, or having in possession for the purpose of 

 sale, of salmon caught during the extension of time for rod fishing ; and 

 the throwing on persons in whose possession salmon are found, in a 

 district where the annual close time has commenced, the onus of proving 

 that they got them in a district where it was still legal to take them. 



All these things are provided for by the English Salmon Fishery 

 Acts; that is to say, they have had in England for many years past 

 what we in Scotland are still striving to obtain. Yet our salmon 

 fisheries are three times as valuable as those of England, but, owing to 

 the remoteness of many of them, the want of fishery boards, and other 

 causes, the facilities for poaching are much greater. It is time, there- 

 fore, that measures should be taken to make our laws as stringent as 

 those of England. Since 1861, it has been illegal in England to sell or offer 

 for sale salmon caught during the extension of time for rod fishing ; and 

 the Select Committee of the House of Lords who reported on the Scottish 

 salmon fisheries in 1860, gave a strong opinion against the sale of fish 

 caught during the extension of time for rod fishing, recommending on page 

 1 1 of their Report, 1 that the annual close time be from the 20th August 

 ' until the 1st February, rod fishing to. continue till the 15th of October; 

 ' but that no salmon, the produce of any fishing in Scotland, be sold after 

 the 1st September.' 



As to the onus of proof, it may almost be said that the English Acts 

 generally throw it, to a great extent, on the persons in whose possession 

 unseasonable salmon are found ; while the Scottish Acts, as interpreted 

 by the decisions of the Courts, throw it on the prosecutor. For example, 



* For a full consideration and discussion of the alterations in the existing Salmon 

 Fishery Acts, which would be generally approved of, and of those with regard to 

 which there would be great difference of opinion, see my Annual Report to the 

 Fishery Board in 1883, on the Salmon Rivers on the East Coast of Scotland, pages 

 39 to 65. 



