night to Monday morning; in many of them I believe this is not insisted upon; whereas the law ought to prohibit fishing for or obstructing the passage of the fish every night from sunset to sunrise, and this regulation ought to be rigorously enforced.  This would give the upper proprietors a chance of having good fish, and a corresponding inducement to take care of them.  Nobody would be so much benefited as the owners of fisheries at the mouths of rivers; they would be the first takers, and would still get the lion’s share of all the fish that ascended the river.  If this regulation were enforced, the expenses of conservators might be defrayed by levying a small tax, in the shape of a licence for angling, which all true sportsmen would be glad to pay if it gave a reasonable prospect of a well-stocked river.  Now matters are getting worse every day, and notwithstanding the enormous fecundity of the Salmon (a large one producing 25,000 ova in a season), they are now extinct in some rivers where they used to be found in my recollection, and in others where they were once abundant they are now very scarce.  No one need to wonder at this, when he is told that gangs of poachers are on the look-out for them all through the spawning season.  In one winter, some years ago, I am credibly informed that two hundred Salmon were taken in one stream within five hundred yards of the spot where I am now writing.  It is nobody’s business and nobody’s interest to prevent this, and therefore it goes on openly night and day.

Are there no influential gentlemen in the House of Commons who will take up this matter and endeavour to get an equitable and comprehensive law passed for the preservation and increase of the breed of Salmon?  It is a matter of even national importance, and if duly provided for and properly attended to, I see no improbability in the supposition that Salmon would again be as abundant as they were when the apprentices on the banks of the Ribble stipulated that they should not be compelled to eat Salmon oftener than three days in the week.  The apathy of country gentlemen in this matter is to me unaccountable.  I have some reason to believe, however, that Government have at all times been so far from lending their influence to the promotion of any attempts to amend these laws, that they have obstructed rather than assisted them, most probably from an idea that the preservation of the fish would interfere with manufactories.  If I thought that this would be the case, I should not say a word on the subject; but I am very far from holding such an opinion.  So far from this being the case, I assert without hesitation that weirs need form no obstruction to the free passage of fish, and that without impairing the efficiency of the water power.  With the poisonous and filthy mixtures sent by some manufactories down the rivers, the case is far different, and where this is done the case is hopeless.  Salmon and Trout will rapidly disappear from such rivers, never to be seen there again, so long as these noxious contaminations are permitted to flow into them.