42 
Appendices to Tenth Annual Report 
salmon. There are many miles of excellent spawning ground above, and 
it would not cost above <£20 to make the dam passable, in the way I 
pointed out. I find, however, that nothing has been done, and it remains 
as great an obstruction as ever. The salmon disease showed itself for the 
first time in Loch Lomond in 1891, but to a very slight extent. The pollu- 
tion of the Leven is still very bad, but there is said to be a hope of a 
new sewage system for the townships on its banks and a joint agreement 
as to filtration by the owners of the dye works. 
Forth District That accomplished naturalist, Mr Harvie-Brown, in writing about the 
—Answers fishing season of 1891, expresses himself as follows : — C I cannot account 
from Mr « f or ^ e phenomenal run of salmon and sea-trout all over Scottish rivers in 
Brown ' autumn of 1891, as related to me at all hands, but I believe it has to do 
' with a wider and recurring migration — different in scale and circum- 
' stances to the annual ones, also to the conditions of spawning 
1 grounds of past few years. But I have no data.' He gives a harrowing 
account of the pollution and obstructions of the Carron and the Bonny, 
tributaries of the Forth. * He strongly objects to many things in the 
present system of salmon management. ' Preservation of kelts : and of 
' old and large fish: killing down our best breeders and spring and summer 
' fish : closing rivers when they ought to be open : opening the early 
' fishing when it ought to be closed, to enable fish to reach their best 
1 spawning ground : allowing old fish and heavy fish to spawn in the 
' lower reaches, and prey upon their cousins, or nieces, or nephews on their 
1 way to the sea : protecting the Bull-trout (eriox), which run late and 
' stock Tweed and other rivers to the partial exclusion of salmon : 
' making " burning the water " a far greater offence in the eye of the law 
' than manufacturers' pollutions, whereas, if fish are speared and taken out 
£ after, it is a relief to the surcharged pool : where a small family can 
' live in comfort, a family ten times bigger than the house can give suffi- 
' cient cubic air measurement to could not. Same with fish and water.' 
River Lossie— Tn my Eighth Report I had the honour of pointing out to the 
Answers from Board the peculiar and unfortunate position of Captain Dunbar Brander 
Diinbar °^ Piko aven y> wno ^ s proprietor of salmon fishings in the sea in the dis- 
Brander. trict of the Lossie, and also lessee of all the salmon fishings in the river, 
but who yet, as the law at present stands, cannot prosecute for the con- 
travention of a bye-law in the district, it having been decided that all such 
prosecutions must be brought, in the first place, at the instance of the 
Clerk to a District Board, and there is no District Board for the Lossie. 
None of the dams on the Lossie have fish-passes, and there is not a single 
mill-lade with hecks. Captain Dunbar wrote me as follows on the subject 
in November last : — ' The Salmon Acts, so far as the River Lossie is con- 
' cerned, are a complete failure. There is no District Board. The three 
1 proprietors entitled to form a Board won't agree — the Duke of Richmond, 
' the Earl of Moray, and myself. I wish to have a Board, but the other 
' two won't join"; there is not a grating on a single mill-lade on the river. 
' I tried to enforce the law, and had a miller up before the Sheriff. The 
' Sheriff said it was only the " Clerk to the Board " that could order a 
( grating, not every common informer — which I was in point of law. 
' There being no Clerk, there is no one entitled to enforce the bye-laws. 
' This should be remedied in any future legislation.' 
The remedy for the hardship of which Captain Dunbar complains, as 
I have pointed out in a former Report, is simple, but it requires further 
legislation. It is to add the words in italics to the 37th section of the 
Salmon Fisheries Act of 1868 : — ' Any proprietor of a fishery shall be held 
' to have a good title and interest at law to sue by action any other pro- 
' prietor or occupier of a fishery within the district, or any other person 
* Yet less than 100 years ago, the Carron was one of the best trout rivers in Scot- 
land. See Note V., page 57. 
