MR. T. SOUTHWELL ON THE SMELT IN NORFOLK WATERS. 341 
year of George II. (17G0) renders it penal to take or possess “any 
Smelt not live inches long.” There can be no doubt that the wise 
regulations under the Xorfolk and Suffolk Tisheries Act of 1877 
have proved very beneficial to the fisheries of the waters coining 
within the jurisdiction of the Act; but if we have no longer to send 
the bellman round, as was the case in 1GG7, to prohibit the taking 
of “any Salmons from the Nativity of our Lady to St. Martin’s 
day,” the change is not so much due to “the ancients” as to our 
more immediate ancestors, who suffered the free coui-se of our rivers 
to bo impeded by mills, and their waters to bo polluted by sewage 
and refuse, thereby bringing about a state of things, the significance 
of which is more obvious than its remedy. Yet, in spite of all 
this, through sewage, dye refuse, and polution of every description, 
year after year, the Smelts continue their vain efforts to 
ascend the Wensum to depo.sit their spawn, and till actually 
stopped by the so called “New Mills” (erected in 1430), 
on the far side of the city, in spite of the obstacles named, 
they persistently pursue their course. In the pool of the 
New iSIills, of course, they are stopped, and there from the 
10th of March to the 12th of May a fishery is actively 
prosecuted, which for singularity and picturesqueness is perhaps 
unequalled in the thickly populated portion of any other city in 
England. 
Doubtless all present are well acquainted with the course of the 
river Wensum from the New Mills dowmwards to Water Lane, 
St. James’, a distance of more than a mile. On either side of the 
water rise buildings, more picturescpie than beautiful, bordering 
the stream by a solid wall on each side, the line only broken by 
an occasional wharf, or by alleys which lead from the adjacent 
streets down to the water side, the outlet of these side approaches 
either ending in a brick quay-side, sufficiently elevated to protect 
the adjacent premi.ses from the influx of the tide at high water, or 
in a gangway rapidly sloped to the water’s edge ; the buildings 
themselves are in every imaginable style, and in all states of 
preservation, from the shitely well-kept brewery, to the tumble- 
down hovel, with its rickety flight of steps descending to the 
water’s edge, the sombre looking dye works, indigo stained, or the 
lofty walls of dwelling-houses, pierced by windows overlooking the 
waters, and crowned by long rows of peaked gables ; the whole, if 
