Essays in Natural History and Agriculture | Page 8

in one spawning season near the source of the
river; the roe of which, when potted, they sold for L20. Need we be
surprised, then, if the breed decreases? The only wonder is that they
have not been exterminated long ago.
I may perhaps be allowed to say what, in my opinion, would remedy
this alarming destruction, particularly as no one hitherto seems to have
devised an efficient preventive. I believe that in 1826 there was an Act
of Parliament passed which either repealed or modified some of the old
laws on the subject, and I have also understood that the good effects of
this new law are already perceptible in Scotland, to which it is
exclusively applied. There was a bill introduced into Parliament in
1825 which was intended to apply to the whole kingdom; but some of
the clauses were so very objectionable, that if they had been carried

they could not possibly have been enforced without stopping and
ruining the manufactories which were carried on by water-power, and
the bill was consequently abandoned. The first thing to be done is to
give the proprietors on the upper part of the river such an interest in the
fisheries as will make them anxious about the preservation of the fish in
the spawning season; and to accomplish so desirable an object no one
ought to fish or keep a net stretched across a river for more than twelve
hours each day, or from sunrise to sunset; and every mill-owner ought
to be compelled to facilitate the passage of the fish over his weir by
every means consistent with the proper supply of water to his wheels.
At present the fisheries at the mouths and lower parts of rivers so
completely prevent the access of the fish to the upper parts, that unless
there happen to be high floods, which prevent the fishermen below
from keeping their nets in, the upper proprietors comparatively seldom
see any until the season is at an end. The evidence before the House of
Commons on this point is exceedingly amusing. One person thinks the
upper proprietors have no right to expect any fish, as they have never
paid any consideration for them when they bought their estates; another
states that he pays L7,000 a year to the Duke of Gordon, and that if he
is compelled to observe a weekly (not a daily) close time, he will lose
that proportion of his rent; another observes the weekly close time, and
opens a passage for the fish, but places a crocodile, painted in very
glaring colours, in the gap to frighten them back again; another says he
observes the weekly close time in his cruive fishing, but no one is
allowed to inspect the cruives; another sends men to break down the
stake nets in the estuary, which reach from high to low water-mark, and
at the same time stretches a net completely across the river from March
to August, so that a fish cannot pass without his permission. No wonder
that fish are scarce in the upper parts of the river, when such samples of
disinterestedness are manifested by the proprietors of the fisheries
below. No wonder that the upper proprietors should be careless about
the protection of fish from which they are not allowed to derive any
benefit. No wonder that they should connive at, and even encourage,
the shameful destruction of fish in close time, since that is the only time
they are allowed to have any. Let the fishermen below make it worth
the while of the upper proprietors to protect the fish, and they will
receive that protection; but it is too much to expect from human nature

that these proprietors will take all the odium and trouble of preserving
them when others reap all the benefit. There ought to be conservators
employed, to see that the fisheries are properly regulated, and these
should be paid by an assessment on all the proprietors in proportion to
the value of their fisheries.
I should also recommend an extension and uniformity of close time in
all the rivers in the kingdom, for although it is an undoubted fact that
some clean fish are caught in the river early in the season, yet they are
comparatively few in number, and their capture involves that of a far
greater number of spawning and Kelt fish, which are not only of no
value for the table, but the destruction of which is in effect the
destruction of millions of fish which would proceed from them. In the
first Parl. Rep., p. 11, Mr. Walter Jamieson says, that in the river
Tweed, from January 10th to February 1st, he caught one hundred and
twenty-one fish, only one of which had spawned; from February 1st to
March 1st he