SALMON. 
195 
Salmons, at twopence per pound, one for the servants, as being 
cheaper than meat, 4s. 9(^.” A common price at present is 
from two shillings up to four shillings the pound. The 
highest price on record is that of a Salmon which weighed 
nineteen pounds, and which, in February, 1809, was sold for 
a guinea the pound; a freak of ostentation that was rather 
caused by a craving to be talked of than to satisfy the 
appetite. 
As a subject of curiosity we will only glance at the laws 
which at a distant date were made to regulate the trade in 
Salmon when bi ought from out of the kingdom, of course in 
a pickled or salted state. In the year 1423, the second of 
Henry the Sixth, it is ordered that “the buttes of Samon 
comyng be wey of merchandise into this land out of straunge 
countrees, and also in this land ymade, shulden be of cei.-in 
mesure;” and that among the strange countries Scotland had 
long held a principal place appears Irom an Act of Parliament 
of the thirty-first of Edward the Third, (1357,) where the fish 
brought from thence are termed Salmon of Bei wick, the con- 
veyance from which place to London at that time could not 
have been effected with fish in a fresh condition. It appears 
further, from an Act of the twenty-second of Edward the 
Fourth, (1482,) in which the right of fishing in the Tweed is 
let on farm to the merchants and freemen of Berwick, with a 
monopoly of the Salmon, that the packing of Salmon in 
barrels was further regulated by the same Edward, and also 
by Henry the Eighth, by whom the monopoly was continued; 
so that Camden was warranted in saying that in ancient times 
Salmon were the chief commodity of Scotland. 
The principal cause which reduced this trade to insignificance 
■was the contrivance by IMr. George Dempster of packing the 
fresh fish in ice, by which means, and the aid of the railroad, 
instead of a sailing vessel they are now sent to the metropolis 
only a little less firm and fresh than when they were caught. 
Ihe fisheries of Ireland are at present in a prosperous condition, 
of which we take the example of the River Foyle, from which 
were sent away in one year of not extraordinary abundance 
eighty thousand Salmon. In May of the year 1831, there 
reached Billingsgate, from the River Spey, in Scotland, seventy 
boxes of iced fish, of which thirty were (Salmon) Trout, the 
