of the Fishery Board for Scotland. 
27 
there is a dam in a somewhat dilapidated condition, which was formerly 
connected with a saw-mill belonging to Mr Mitchell Innes of Phantassie. 
This mill no longer exists. But it is alleged — and the statement has 
been made to me again and again — that the lade belonging to the dam is 
systematically used as a trap for salmon. A keeper in the neighbourhood 
told me that he has known a box containing 1 43 lbs. of salmon or sea- 
trout captured in this lade, and sent away from the railway station at 
East Linton. The lade, Avhen I saw it — the river being very low — was 
shallow and considerably overgrown with weeds, and it contains a good 
deal of nice gravelly spawning ground. At the intake there is a wooden 
sluice, then a foot-bridge of a single plank, and then an iron heck. The 
salmon or sea-trout, as I was informed, come up the tail-lade, where there 
is no heck. They are stopped by the iron heck at the intake ; the 
wooden sluice above that heck is shut ; and they are trapped and 
captured. This lade appears to have been used for a long period of 
years as a salmon trap, as it is mentioned by the late Sir Thomas 
Dick Lauder in his ' Rivers of Scotland,' which were first published in 
Taifs Magazine about 1848, and afterwards collected and published in a 
separate form in 1854. He there writes as follows about this lade : — 
I must now say a few words about the angling. As we have already men- 
tioned, the salmon, which are all of them small, do not rise to the fly, but a 
number of them are taken by Mr Innes by means of shutting and opening the 
flood-gates of an old mill-run immediately opposite to the church. 
It humbly seems to me that, as there is confessedly now no mill in con- 
nection with this dam — or, in other words, no justiflcation or reason for 
the existence of the dam or lade — that the lade should be closed up, and 
all the water sent over the dam. No owner of a mill, even if he has a 
right to salmon-fishings, is entitled to use his lade for the capture of 
salmon. And if his lade be supplied with hecks, in terms of the provisions 
of the Bye-law (Schedule G), it is impossible that the lade can be 
efficiently used for suc-h a purpose. And it must be kept in mind that 
the decision of the Court of Session, in the case of ' Kennedy v. Murray, 
' 8th July 1869,' distinctly and unequivocally declares that owners and 
occupiers of mills are bound to execute, at their own cost, the works ordered 
to be executed by the Bye-laws made by the Commissioners of Scotch 
Salmon Fisheries. That is to saj^, in the case of mills and manufactories 
worked by means of w^ater taken from a salmon river, they are bound 
to have ' placed and constantly kept ' at every intake and tail-lade, and 
also ^acro.-^s the lade or troughs immediately above the entrance to each 
* mill-wheel a beck or grating, the bars to be not more than 3 inches 
* apart if horizontal, and not more than 2 inches if vertical,' — all in terms 
of the Bye-law (Schedule G), which took effect from the 28th July 1865. 
The tail-lade from Phantassie dam joins the river just below Preston 
dam. Preston dam is not much of an obstruction. Above this dam 
there is a considerable stretch of still water, thickly overhung by tall trees 
on one side, which is said to be a favourite lie for big fish. 
The next mill, proceeding down the river, is Knowes Mill. Here also 
there is no heck at the intake, and the lade diverts by far the larger 
portion of the water in the river for the use of the mills which it sup- 
plies. It is the largest lade below Haddington, being in places between 
20 and 30 feet wide, and 6 feet deep. There is a very effective heck, 
however, at the tail-lade. There is also a heck above one mill-wheel be- 
longing to a mill, under which the lade passes on its way to supply, after 
a long course, the saw-mill at Tyninghame. On this last-named mill 
there is a heck on the tail-lade, which joins the river within the policies 
at Tyninghame. 
