of the Fishery Board for Scotland. 
29 
they made way up the river at and below the * Salt Greens' below Tyninghame 
Bridge. My late uncle, who was a riparian proprietor at Linton, below the 
linn (about 1810), used to set nets on his side of the water, and on several 
occasions took salmon ascending the river. 
The same Mr Meikle told me that he recollected the ' salmon net-fishing in his 
tack ' being a profitable concern, and the late Mr George Kennie of Phantassie, 
told me that he has known his father's sub-tenant at the Preston Barley Mill 
take ' cartloads of salmon from his dam cruives of a morning^ and drive them into 
Edi7iburgh market.^ I am informed that in the Town Clerk of Haddington's 
office there are still to be seen contracts of service, apprentices and others, in 
which there arc provisions that no more than a stipulated quantity of salmon 
should be given as food to the servants, parties to the contract. 
The most probable account of the diminution of the nunibers of salmon was 
the erection of the large distilleries at Linton, Belhaven, Haddington, Westfield, 
and Milton {all within a sphere of say^ 9 miles of the river), and the diminished 
quantity of the water, owing to the extensive hill and lowland drainage within 
this century — so that the Tyne is a much smaller river, even in my day. 1 have 
seen an ox grazing on land over which I have caught trout with fly, when the 
river was of bulk to overflow and make a good trout stream, so that whatever 
the Commissioners may do or leave undone, they can know little of the history 
of the Tyne Salmon Fishery if they aver that it is not legally within the category 
of the Salmon Rivers of Scotland. 
I think it is highly probable that what is stated above with regfird to 
the improved system of land-drainage having injured the Tyne as a salmon 
river is correct. 
When Mr Spencer Walpole and myself were appointed Special Com- 
missioners in 1874, to inquire into the operation of the Tweed Fisheries 
Acts, we came to the conclusion, after careful personal inspection and con- 
sideration of evidence, that the chief cause which had led to the great 
falling off in the yield of the Tweed fisheries during the last forty years, 
as compared with the previous forty years, was the general drainage of 
the Tweed valley that followed upon the advance of money on easy terms 
by Parliament in 1846 to the landlords of the United Kingdom. The 
character of the floods was changed. The land, instead of being like a 
sponge which is gradually squeezed out, became intersected by a network 
of drains which discharged tiie active rainfall into the river in a few hours. 
The river now rises and falls suddenly, instead of behig in flood, more or 
less, for a week ; so that migratory fish, like salmon, have far less oppor- 
tunity than formerly of entering the river. What operated prejudicially 
on the salmon fisheries in a great river like the Tweed, would operate still 
more prejudicially on a small stream like the Tyne. 
What is stated in the above-quoted letter seems to be corroborated by 
Sir John Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, which was pub- 
lished during the last decade of the 18th century, or about 100 
years ago. In the account of the Parish of Prestonkirk, the following 
occurs : — 
At the village of East Linton, a little way above the church, the stream, 
after falling over some broken rocks of considerable height, runs chiefly 
through a flat, fertile haugh till it reaches the sea. In this lower part of 
the river considerable quantities of salmon are caught, and excellent trouts 
throughout the \vliole river ; but it is thought the numbers of the former 
would be much increased were the rocks that interrupt the channel at Linton 
]>ri(lge blown up so as to aftbrd a passage for them to get up more freely. 
And in the account of tlio Parishes of Whitekirk and Tyninghame it 
is stated that : — 
The fish found in the Tyne are trout and grilse, neither of which are 
remarkal)ly plenty. A few salmon are sometimes found, hut they arc very rare. 
The riglit of Hshing the Tyne up to the Knowes Mill and the sea-coast at ils 
mouth from within a cable's length of Westbarns Burn to the Water of 
