20 



Appendices to Seventh Annual Report 



FAILURE OF THE SYSTEM OF DISTRICT BOARDS ON THE 



WEST COAST. 



One of the most valuable suggestions in the above answers is that 

 regarding the necessity of amalgamating the small fishery districts on the 

 West Coast into larger districts, in which the assessment levied on the 

 fishings would be sufficient to pay a clerk, river- watchers, and the other 

 machinery necessary for a practically useful District Board. Any one 

 who will take the trouble to glance over the map prefixed to my Third 

 Annual Report to the Fishery Board, in which the boundaries of all the 

 fishery districts are marked ; the districts which have no District Boards 

 being left white, and the districts where there are District Boards being 

 coloured pink ; will be at no loss to see why there are scarcely any District 

 Boards on the West Coast • whereas on almost all the East Coast rivers 

 there are Boards. This map shows, what I afterwards point out at some 

 length in the course of my Report, that the question of District Boards is 

 very much a question of expense. It is not the apathy of the proprietors, 

 but the poverty of the fishings, in the small rivers and districts of the 

 West Coast, that accounts for the almost total absence of District Boards 

 in that part of Scotland. The two largest rivers on the West Highland 

 Coast, indeed the only two large rivers, the Lochy — with its tributary the 

 Spean — and the Awe have both got District Boards ; and when we come to 

 the East Coast, where are all the great rivers of Scotland, with the 

 exception of the Clyde, we find that nearly all these rivers, from the 

 Forth to the Kyle of Sutherland, both inclusive, have, and have long had, 

 District Boards. They can afford it, and find it worth while to have them. 

 The West Coast rivers in Ross-shire, Inverness-shire, and Argyllshire, on 

 the other hand, cannot afford them, even in the simplest and most rudi- 

 mentary form. How can a river with a catchment basin of 8, or 10, or 

 20 square miles, and with, perhaps, half-a-dozen bag-nets within the limits 

 of the district, afford, by an assessment cn the fishings within that 

 district, to pay a clerk to the District Board and watchers ? So far as 

 these rivers are concerned, the system of District Boards has proved a 

 failure, and either some other system must be devised, or else a number 

 of these small districts must be combined into larger districts, in which 

 the assessments on the fixed nets and the river fishings will be sufficient 

 to maintain the necessary machinery for a District Board. A very brief 

 inspection of the map will show that, though only about one-third of £he 

 Fishery Districts in Scotland have District Boards, this one-third has a 

 larger watershed than that belonging to the remaining two-thirds of the 

 fishery districts which have no District Boards. The average drainage 

 area of the West Coast rivers (including the Clyde), where there are 

 scarcely any District Boards, is hardly 80 square miles ; whilst that of 

 the East Coast rivers (not including the Tweed), almost all of which have 

 District Boards, is upwards of 350 square miles. 



The following counties have no District Boards, namely : — Dumbarton, 

 Kinross, part of Fife, Midlothian, Renfrew, Linlithgow, Caithness, Ross 

 and Cromarty ; yet the last-named county has no fewer than thirty-two 

 salmon rivers on the mainland and in the Hebrides. Argyllshire, also, with 

 thirty-two salmon rivers, has only two District Boards, that of the Island 

 of Mull and that of the Awe, which was reconstituted by the Court of 

 Session a few years ago. 



In the English Salmon Fisheries Act of 1873 the amalgamation of 

 districts is provided for by section 5, which is as follows ; — 



