THE SALMON.*
WE take shame to ourselves for having left this amusing and exhaustive book on the history, pi actice, and legislation of sal- mon-fishing so long unnoticed. Its author, well known all over Great Britain as editor of the Scotsman, and in Scotland as one of the most indefatigable and successful of fishermen, has brought the skill gained in the one craft and the knowledge acquired in the other to bear upon a single subject, and has consequently produced a book as full of argument and evidence as a "year book," and rather more readable than ordinary novels. His object is threefold—to prove that salmon is decaying, that the decay is owing to the wastefulness of man, and not to any law of nature such as the one which is killing out the elephants, and that it is possible by legislation to restore the plenty of the sal- mon-yielding rivers, and he succeeds in all three. The evidence he has collected on the decay of salmon is especially conclusive. Defoe, for example, described the quantity of salmon in Scotland as a prodigy, and salmon was a hundred years later part of the daily food of the common people. So excessive has been the decline since then that the testimony given before a Royal Com- mission in 1860 showed an average decline of nine-tenths, and though Mr. Russel believes this to be exaggerated, to be in fact only a popular impression due chiefly to the new power of exporting the fish, still it is in partjustified by statistics not open to objection. The following table shows the case in detail, being a genuine return of the numbers of fish caught in the Tweed, with Mr. Russel's definition under each heading :—
Salmon.
j. e., Adult fish.
Grilse. Trout.
t. e., Juvenile salmon. A different and
coarser fisb.
1811 to 1815 40,297 68,057 31,235 1816 to 1820 37,938 87,089 48,078 1821 to 1825 22,930 57,647 62,475 1826 to 1830 9,801 53,990 48,864 1831 to 1835 14,416 65,112 69,121 1836 to 1840 14,149 52,283 54,877 1841 to 1845 18,846 81,047 69,712 1846 to 1850 11,479 56,190 49,630 1851 to 1855 9,085 23,905 32,761
In simpler form we may say that in forty years the take of salmon in the Tweed has declined eighty per cent. The only exception to this rate of decline is the Tay, an exception result- ing from two facts, that the Tay fur half its course is a firth too broad to be fished to death, and that in its upward course the river is owned by a very few very powerful proprietors, who can do as much for its protection as the law. It is safer to steal a sheep on the Breadalbane estates than poach a salmon, and so of course the fish have time to get fat and flourish.
The decrease thus proved, from details and evidence which we do not attempt even to notice, we pass on to its causes. These are, first, the extension of drainage, which pollutes the rivers till the salmon either will not ascend, or die in ascending ; second, the killing of spawning fish in closed time; third, the brevity of the close season; and, fourth, over-fishing with net and coble and stake nets. The diminution caused by this last evil is carefully shown by statistics, which prove to demonstration that the erection of stake nets instantly diminishes the value of the fisheries. They clear the fisheries, moreover, so completely that there are not fish enough left to replenish the rivers, while according to the Com- missioners they scare the fish back to the sea, where the wild beasts of the ocean get them instead of men,—an injury to salmon as well as mankind, for while we get too few fish at too high a price, the salmon has to be eaten discreditably without sauce, which ought to hurt his feelings at least as much as the idea of a cotton shroud injures those of a Scotch peasant.
We cannot follow Mr. Russel through his history of preserva- tive legislation in England, Scotland, and Ireland, merely stating that in Scotland the Act of 1862, drawn, we believe, by Mr. Russel himself, provided against almost all the causes of decay except one. It extended the annual close time from 139 days to 168 days, and the weekly close time by six hours, prohibits fishing with lights, prohibits the sale of salmon roe, in short meets most points, but does not prohibit the stake nets. The main object of his book therefore, besides giving an entertaining history of the whole subject, is to induce Parliament to abolish fixed engines of all kinds pretty summarily. The only objection to that course is, it appears, the one universal in England—vested interests in the stake, bag, and other nets, the rights to which are now considerable properties. Nobody contends that the fixed engines are not nuisances, but the right to use them has become by lapse of time a kind of property, and Parliament cannot endure to touch a property without compensation. Mr. Russel 4' The Salmon. By Alexander Russel. London: Edmouaton and DJuglaa.
contends first that the right is not property because established by legislation and subject to its changes ; secondly, because the engines do more injury to the public than they do good to their owners ; and thirdly, because the property has been built up by plundering the proprietors of the upper waters. The last seems the best argument of the three, for most of the rights of property saleable in England are the creation of the Legislature, which could not, for example, confiscate all properties built up under patents without being guilty of confiscation. There must, we think, be compensation of some sort, say by a tax on the rentals of the improved fish properties; but that is a matter of detail. The point of Mr. Russel's book is, that without strict preservation the salmon perishes ; that with it it may multiply and become com- paratively cheap; and that the way to preserve it is to abolish stake nets, to make close time as long as opinion will bear, to cleanse the rivers, and to punish sharply all modes of taking salmon other than rod, net, and spear. That statement is set forth illustrated by some two hundred pages of facts, figures, anecdotes, and clear arguments, and should be pondered by every one who loves sport or owns any section of a river.
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