across the rivers like the hurdles across the
much-worn paths in Hyde Park—day nets,
night nets, and nets that fish by themselves day
and night. Imagine Rotton Row a salmon
stream, the good citizens salmon. Four P.M.,
the spate and the fish running up, a great net
is spread at the three arches at Hyde Park-
corner, another great net from the statue to the
Duke's house, nets half way across the Row
every fifty yards,* and every now and then a
wall with nets in the gaps; add to this, fierce
and cunning ogres fishing for us from the walk
with rods and hooks baited with devices the
most tempting to our nature. How many of us
would get up to Kensington Gardens, where, all
collected there listening to the band, suddenly
from the tree-tops is let down a huge net, and
the assembled crowd encircled with its lethal
meshes, and taken out like a net of cabbages
out of a kitchen boiler; even suppose a few
did, and imagine the young fish coming down
again from the Gardens to the sea (which we
will call Piccadilly), the innocents would be
stopped short by the nets and caught by the
rods;** they would be knocked in the head by
the wheels (mill-wheels); one out of a thousand
would get away safely. Rotton Row would
soon become depopulated, Kensington Gardens
spawnless, and the race extinct; the ogres
would give up preserving our race.

* In the rivers Ribble and Hodder, I am
informed, on good authority, the young salmon
(smolts) were caught by the thousands on their way
to the sea in "shakle nets," and are sold to be eaten
at 8d. a pound. Ye foolish fishers, ye are eating
bank-notes at 8d. a pound. In Scotland, millers,
navvies, labourers of all kinds, arm themselves with
a wand, and catch all they can as bait for their
own hungry maws and to catch (gads) pikes.

** In the Field newspaper, May 28, 1861, is a
facsimile drawing of a piece of a stake net from the
Solway Firth. It will be seen that a pound trout
could hardly pass through the mesh; which, moreover,
has been so thickly covered and heavily coated
with pitch, that it is much reduced in size, and
rendered almost as rigid as thick wire. A formidable list
of the stake nets in the Solway Firth is given; some
of them extend out into the Firth two-thirds of a
mile, and when to some fifty of these nets are added
the three hundred poke nets, it is a wonder that
anything ever enters into the numerous and beautiful
rivers that flew into the Solway Firth.

The case above drawn is no exaggeration if
applied to fish. And here are five causes of
the decrease of salmon written in black and
white:

1. The employment of fixed engines, machinery,
and other methods of fishing, which are prejudicial
to the interests of the fisheries, whether at the
mouths of rivers or up stream, and their name is
legion.

2. The wilful polluting and poisoning of rivers.
Fish can no more live in impure water than we can
in carbonic acid gas.

3. The killing, sale, and exportation of unseasonable
fish. We don't eat a pheasant in June.

4. Want of observance of a strict and proper
limited close-time while the fish are breeding, so
as to ensure the free passage of travelling fish to
their spawning-beds up stream.

5. The obstruction caused in rivers by mill-dams
and weirs, built with little or no regard to the
progress of the salmon, and in a great many rivers
totally preventing the fish from going up stream,
except in heavy spates and high floods.

These five heads include, in a very few words,
such a vast amount of human rascality, as would
indeed form an excellent theme for a novelist,
were he in search of new facts whereby to
demonstrate the selfishness, and cruelty, and
wickedness of our race. It would, indeed,
seem that the salmon was our deadliest enemy
instead of our best friend. The order is, catch
him with nets, fairly if possible, but, anyhow,
catch him; poison his atmosphere, smoke him
out, spear the spawning mother, rendered tame
for the moment by her natural instinct to propagate
her species, sell her carcase (for it can be
called nothing else), cut the throat of the golden
goose and sell her body, and hang the
consequences! Whensoever and wheresoever man
has taken upon himself to interfere with Nature,
Nature retaliates by giving him trouble. If
there were no game-laws, where would now be
our pheasants, partridges, hares, and rabbits? If
the coverts were netted, the birds shot down,
the eggs destroyed, the breeding parents
exterminated, where would the future supply come
from? In a short time a British pheasant
would become as rare as a British bustard, a
Jack hare as scarce as a Saxon wolf. Yet the
poor salmon is persecuted in every way, and the
natural consequence is that his race is fast waning,
and, if strenuous means are not adopted, will
utterly fade away. Again, the selfishness of man is
brought into operation in the persecution of this
unfortunate fish. They come—to use a
complimentary phrase applied by a local paper to the
good folks at Ascot Races—in "countless hordes"
to the mouth of a river which shall be nameless,
the proprietor of the fisheries at the mouth of
the river stops their progress by every possible
impediment, and does his utmost to hinder a
single fish ascending higher than his own pools;
he thins their ranks like a charge of English
grape-shot sent into a crowded Chinese fort:
then the next proprietor above has his turn at
them; and so on, till the few fortunate survivors
of this sub-aqueous "forlorn hope" arrive at
their haven of bliss, the clear upper waters,
where they anticipate peace and quietness.

No such thing; the upper proprietors are
determined to have their share of the fisheries, and
a goodly average of the fish are destroyed. The
upper proprietor says, "I will not preserve the
fish that their progeny may go into the net of
the lower proprietor." This gentleman plants his
hands in his pockets, fixes his hat on his head,
and orders more nets and more fishing-boats.

The middle proprietors care neither for their
neighbour on their right hand, nor for their neighbour
on their left, and "all is fish that comes to
their net." Personal quarrels and conflicting
interests all heap death and destruction on the
salmon. We never see the inevitable dog crossing