of the Fishery Board for Scotland. 
45 
1865. There are other important differences that might be mentioned, 
but those already stated seem to me sufficient to prove that Mr Humphreys' 
recommendation is one that should not be given effect to. 
I now proceed to notice the special points which Mr Humphreys 
considers of material importance in any new Salmon Fishery Bill. 
At the top of page 2, in the copy of his letter, he insists upon the 
necessity of prohibiting the ' taking, buying, selling, exposing for sale, or 
' having in possession any unclean or unseasonable salmon, or any part 
' thereof.' I understand that this is provided for in the Consolidation Bill, 
now in the hands of the Lord Advocate, in which another of Mr 
Humphreys' recommendations, namely, ' that the exportation of salmon 
' from Scotland, during the close time, should be absolutely prohibited/ 
is also given effect to. 
I think the following suggestions of Mr Humphreys worthy of the 
attentive consideration of the Board : — ' (b) That a clause should be 
'inserted, creating a venue, and making the consignor of unclean or 
'unseasonable salmon liable to prosecution wherever such salmon is 
1 found or seized in the United Kingdom, without proof of the transit of 
' the fish, (d) That the importation of Dutch and other salmon into the 
' United Kingdom, during close time, should be prohibited, or, if 
' permitted, be restricted under certain rules.' 
With reference to this last recommendation, I may state that, in an 
able and elaborate report on the habits of the salmon, recently presented 
to the Minister of Marine and of the Colonies in France by M. Amedee 
Berthoule, and published in the Journal Offlciel de la Republique 
Frangaise, the reporter writes as follows concerning the importation of 
foreign salmon into France during the close season : — 
'We strongly insist that such exceptions, injurious from every point of 
' view, should be erased from our legislation ; the public will not suffer, 
' because it is exactly during the months of October, November, and December 
'that the traffic in salmon is quite insignificant. For example, during the 
' year 1887, when a million and a half of pounds of foreign salmon were sold 
'in Paris, only ninety thousand pounds were sold in these three months 
' combined.' 
There is one suggestion in Mr Humphreys' letter of which I strongly 
disapprove. It is to the following effect: — 'That an absolute and 
' universal close season for salmon fishing, and the dealing in salmon, 
' in the whole of the United Kingdom, should be definitely fixed.' 
The only thing to be urged in favour of such a recommendation is, that 
the hard and fast uniform close time thereby fixed would tend to prevent 
poaching, and would facilitate the detection of unseasonable salmon. 
But it is an outrage on the laws of nature, so far as our Scotch salmon 
rivers are concerned. To fix the same close time for the Tay and the 
Laxford, or for the Nith and the Naver, would be as unnatural as the 
doings of Procrustes, who cut short those of his captives who were too 
long for his bed, and violently stretched out those who were too short for it. 
As a general rule, all our salmon rivers between the Hope — which 
flows into Loch Erribol on the North Coast of Sutherland — and Cape 
Wrath, and southward from Cape Wrath along the West Coast of 
Scotland and up to the head of the Scotch shore of the Solway Firth, are 
late; whereas almost all the rivers eastward of the Hope, between it and 
Duncansby Head, and southward between Duncansby Head and the 
Tweed, are early. The cause of this lateness or earliness I believe to 
arise from the relative temperatures of the fresh water of the rivers, and 
of the sea into which they flow. I stated this theory in letters to the 
Scotsman in October and November 1875 ; and afterwards more fully in 
