1861.] The British Salmon Fisheries. On this, Ida rose in great perturbation, and with a voice that could hardly fulfil its office, entreating Harry to ask no questions, and to believe that nothing was the matter, she ran past him out of the room up to her own chamber, whence she presently issued, and entered the drawing-room with an animated, only somewhat flushed face (such is the power of women 745 under proof), and distinguished herself during the remainder of the evening by her vivacity of manner. Célestine instituted a variety of games for the amusement of the party, and Ida entered into them with such wonderful zeal, that even the little Antonia was not her match in spirit and enthusiasm, and Aunt Kitty extolled her looks, and rejoiced in her gaiety. THE BRITISH SALMON FISHERIES. A FULL-GROWN salmon, in prime condition, is the free gift of nature to its captor, having cost nothing for its keep, and no more than the expense of catching it yet it is now as dear as a haunch of venison. At the close of the last century, when this king of freshwater fish-'the red venison of the waters'-could not be transported in a fresh state to centres of demand, it was ordinarily sold throughout remote parts of the three kingdoms at an average price of about twopence a pound; but since these kingdoms have become united by steam communication, salmon is sent up, packed in ice, to the metropolis, and has risen greatly in price. By the facilitation of transport local cheapness has ceased, for the whole kingdom has been raised to the level of the central market. In the cases of other alimentary animals capable of augmentation by care, the supply would soon have equalled the demand; but the circumstances connected with this fish are so singular, that cupidity, defective legislation, and absence of preservation, have combined to effect the very contrary result-viz., a notable diminution in their numbers, which, again, has enhanced the price. The trade rate in London rose from 94d. per pound in 1834, to Is. Id. in 1860, and everywhere else the price has risen from a much lower figure to this comparatively high one. In Scotland the past generation bought salmon by the score-208. for twenty-one fish, large and small, as they came. Now, a single fish will fetch the same sum. There can be little doubt that in early ages the rivers of Britain supplied a principal article of food to her primitive inhabitants whilst the population was small and scattered, and prior to the invention of civilized contrivances for the capture of salmon. The traces of dwellings of the ancient Britons on the barren hills of Northumberland, and in other mountainous districts, imply that, wherever the soil was sterile, such natural and easily-acquired produce as riverfish formed the chief subsistence of man, as it did to the Canadian Indians, thousands of whom, it is declared by the first explorers, lived exclusively upon salmon, and even used the fish dried as fuel. No one can of course expect that our streams will ever teem with life as of yore. About forty years ago, when the improved mode of fishing with fixed nets was generally introduced, there was a popular idea that the value of salmon would fall, but it did not, because there was no addition to the supply, which obviously is not to be obtained by additional modes of capture, but by increased preservation. At present salmon is a luxury so much sought for by the wealthy, that its production cannot be overdone. It is therefore more important than ever that the Legislature should attend to the development of this national resource; and accordingly a Royal Commission was issued last summer 'to inquire into the Salmon Fisheries of England and Wales, with a view of increasing the supply of a valuable article of food for the benefit of the public.' The Commission was appointed, we believe, in consequence of the remarkable difference visible between the Scottish and Irish salmon fishings, the former having decayed, while the latter, favoured by judicious legislation, have improved; and certainly, in the face of this contrast, and of the notorious fact that the English and Welsh fishings have become almost extinct, it was high time to inquire into a neglected, or rather ill-regulated source of national wealth. The value of the salmon taken of late years in Scotland is understood to average £600,000 annually. In a Report of 1857, the Irish Fishery Board compute the value caught in Ireland at about half that amount. Probably the value taken in England and Wales is less by five-sixths, although the rivers of these countries are one-fourth greater in extent than 'Green Erin of streams.' The Commission, presided over by the eminent naturalist Sir William Jardine, and having the skilled professional aid of Mr. Ffennell, one of the Irish inspectors, has, after a careful series of local inquiries, issued an instructive and admirable Report. Finding the English salmon fisheries in a state of lamentable depression, the Commissioners declare that this decline and partial ruin are mainly to be ascribed to erroneous opinions respecting both the nature and habits of the fish, and the true interests of those who possess or claim rights in the fisheries; and that, considering the impediments, barriers, and other destructive agencies which exist on all the rivers, it is a matter of surprise, not that the produce should have greatly fallen off, but that the breed should not have been totally extinguished. Although occasionally referring throughout their Report to the mischievous effect of false notions and shortsighted views as to this fish and the best time and modes of capturing it, the Commissioners did not enter searchingly into its natural history; and we ourselves have not space to do much more than notice the great and leading mistake from which the injury to the breed has chiefly resulted. According to the vulgar idea, a salmon produces 'myriads' of its kind, and therefore, it is argued, since a single pair suffice to stock a river, there is no harm in killing all except a Deucalion and his finny and fortunate spouse; whereas, in truth, no census or statistics do or can inform us as to the proportion of smolts or fry that, escaping every other peril, come grown up into man's hand. Among the misstatements dictated by interested motives, is the assertion that salmon spawn in the sea-an idea unsupported by any eye-witness, and contrary to the result of repeated experiments, yet advanced to support the system of capture in the sea. A minor and less mischievous opinion is, that some rivers may be fished earlier and some later than others. This argument, which unquestionably is partly warranted by natural differences in those rivers, has for its object to supply the market at a time when the price is high on account of the general closure. Ignorance is, of course, at the root of the errors which have caused the scarcity of this fish, since, were the habits of the animal better known, it might be easy to make laws better calculated to preserve and increase the breed. To comprehend the creature's ways is the difficulty, because all its movements and proceedings take place in an element in which they cannot be traced. Committee after committee have sat upon the subject; but the testimony laid before them, being influenced by antagonistic interests, is most contradictory. Certain scientific questions, therefore, remain, which are beyond the power of man to elucidate. Some valuable hints might be gained, were the Highlanders, who firmly believe that seals are animated by fallen spirits, to overcome their distaste for dealings with the devil, and, more successful than Captain Hector McTurk, to extort a response on carefully adjusted interrogatories 1861.] Ilabits and Hazards of Salmon. from some venerable member of a tribe, which has the oldest of all piscatorial interests. Our Irish fishing friends, not less superstitious and more gallant, might on their side look for a mermaid, and do service to science and the cuisine by examining her as to what passes under water. Joking apart, the habits of the salmon are peculiar, and therefore require special consideration whenever rights of property in salmon fisheries are about to be affected by legislative enactments. Salmon are gregarious as well as migratory. The fry, hatched in mere brooks, move down to the sea in shoals, and reappearing as 'schools' or collections of grilse, probably composed of separate clans, return to their rivulets. True Highlanders, born amid the hills, they go out to forage, and instinctively come back again. To a practised eye their shapes, scales, stripes, and spots mark the river they belong to quite as distinctly as various tartans distinguish different septs. Urged at the breeding-season by an irresistible impulse, a salmon is not arrested in her course up her native river either by the most rapid current or by any cascade she can possibly surmount. She is seeking in some distant rivulet, perhaps hundreds of miles inland, a spot where to deposit the germ of her future progeny: her destination being a gravelly bed, where the fresh water runs clearly and quickly at a shallow depth over a shingly bottom. She and her mate having reached a favourable place, they open furrows in the stony ground, and having deposited the roe, cover it carefully with gravel. They plough and sow; the fisherman reaps, the angler gleans; but these harvesters must spare some seedcorn. A few fish will not suffice, for-notwithstanding their prolific quality, each female containing about one thousand eggs for every pound of her weight-such is the uncertainty attending the vivification of the ova, and such the dangers which beset the tender fry, that the proportion which arrives at maturity is believed to be very small. 747 The species becomes extinct unless the brood fish can ascend to where the stream is sure to be both pure and shallow in the season of spring, because the then new-born fry, which germinate like a braird of corn, cannot exist in either deep or stagnant water. Air they must have, and this is only to be had under a rippling current. To reach this spot, situate in the moors, under the blue mountain's slope, the parent fish, having first eluded her stealthy foe, the seal, has had to escape a hundred nets, all agape for her; to make, though heavy and faint, some score of leaps before she could get over one of the dozen dams that opposed her progress; and to breast many a torrent, or rush up more than one hazardous rapid. The great exertion involved in overcoming a long course of obstacles, and the operation of depositing her ova, render her no longer the vigorous and beautiful creature she was when she left the ocean. She is emaciated, has lost her lustre, and is languid in her movements. Then it is that she becomes the easy prey of the poacher. Such are some of the ills that salmon flesh is heir to; and doubtless, the many perils to which it is liable while moving through flood and field, form the reason why this fish, notwithstanding its fecundity, is gradually becoming extinct in this country. The Commissioners, who conducted their inquiry last year through the districts of the principal salmon rivers, in some instances found that the fish, formerly abundant, had already totally disappeared; in others their numbers had fallen off so greatly that the present takings did not amount to more than a hundredth part of what they had been within the memory of living witnesses. Perhaps the most interesting portion of their report is devoted to descriptions of the natural characters of these fine waters, and the peculiar modes of fishing employed in them. Let us pass a few of these in review. The Bristol Channel is the outlet of some of the largest and best English and Welsh salmon rivers, the noble Severn, the beautiful Wye, the Usk, Avon, and small intermediate streams, draining a rain-basin of no less than 8580 square miles. The Severn has every requisite for a first-rate fishproducing river. Its salmon have a first-class reputation, but their fame was probably due to their earlier appearance on London dinner-tables in times when stagecoaches formed the most rapid means of transport. Measured with its tributaries, the Severn affords many hundred miles of fishing, 130 of which are public property: every one who can get a boat and net being entitled to fish. The upper streams are capable of affording good angling; but, unhappily, their immense extent of spawning ground is nearly waste. One tributary alone has forty miles of this ground, which, it is calculated, would require 4000 pairs of fish to stock, so as to bring out its full strength. As we have premised, the spawning ground forms the field of the future aquatic harvest; on its extent, and on the degree to which it is sown, the amount of return will mainly depend The Wye, a large as well as lovely river, has great capabilities in the extent of its spawning ground; and if the dwellers in its upland districts were conservative instead of destructive, would surpass any other English stream in the production of what gave it renown in the mind of Fluellen. But alas! his living countrymen are said to be merciless in the matter of killing breeding fish on the spawning beds, carrying on their destructive practice in large parties, and with so high a hand as to set the law at defiance. After winter is over, illicit fishing changes its fashion from that rough form to one not less ruthless, torch and spear being laid aside for the small deadly meshes of the 'quiet net,' which are especially adapted to clear a stream of fry, and sweep up everything that has life. This river is so perfectly and singularly free from impediments, that there is nothing to prevent fish from going up to the very sources of its tributary brooks; yet it seems about to suffer the fate of some of its sisters, by the projected opening of a mine, which will poison its waters at their very fountain. The principal South Wales river is the Teifi, a fine stream, in which the coracle, or wicker-work skiff, covered with leather or canvas, still plies its old trade-a man drifting in a coracle at each end of the net, which sweeps the channel. Not fewer than four hundred men obtain their livelihood by fishing this river by this antiquated method. Passing northward, and referring to Domesday Book, we read that the fishery at Eaton, on the Dee, rendered, eight centuries ago, no fewer than one thousand salmon yearly as rent to its lord. At this rate, we may believe that the entire river then yielded tenfold its present produce. Such are the existing difficulties of preserv ing it, that one witness, though an enthusiastic conservator, protested he would not undertake to have it properly watched for £1000 a year. The Conway and the Dee are the only two rivers in North Wales in which salmon remain in sufficient numbers to attract anglers. The former is so fortunate because it is owned by one proprietor only, who has leased it to a brotherhood of the rod and line. The latter is so because fishing associations expended, from 1853 to 1860, the telling sum of £1977 on its preser vation. In Lancashire, some large streams in which salmon formerly abounded have been ruined by mill and canal weirs and the great extension of manufactures. The Lune, rising in a hilly country, with an ample space of spawning ground, would be full of fish were not the entrance barred by an enormous weir and fishing traps. In 1833, this engine produced £1000 a year; in 1859, only £307. Further north, the Commissioners entered the Lake District, the centre of which is high and mountainous land, reaching an elevation of above 3000 feet, with lakes in the valleys of considerable extent and depth. 1861.] The Wear, the Avon, and the Humber. These natural characteristics are those best adapted to the production of salmon, which luxuriate in a clear mountain river, ever flowing from the frequent fall of rain, and suitable to the fish in possessing lochs and pools of fresh water, and numerous fords or beds of shingly stone. The Lake District has many good rivers, differing from other English streams in this-that, having but a short run between their mountain sources and the sea, they afford but a small extent of spawning ground. This disadvantage is, however, compensated by the fact of their passing through large lakes, the presence of a loch being advantageous to a salmon river, as it gives a safe resting place to the fish that come up early, until they are ready to seek the tributary streams, and also enables the old fish to take advantage of the first floods in the river to pass down to the sea. In Ireland, under a mild climate, another effect of a lake, or reservoir of rain water, is to attract salmon up from the sea early in the year, when the snow and ice in other streams repel the fish. Yet in the English Lake District the fishery is not early. Thus, in the Leven, which rises in the high country close upon the point of Scawfell and passes through Windermere, the snow broth, which fish cannot abide, being unaërated water, comes down so late in the spring, that the fish do not run up till the end of May. The Commissioners observe that a considerable_number of fish still ascend the Lake rivers, and that a few simple arrangements would soon increase the number, since great natural advantages are here neglected and abused. The Derwent was shown to have been two centuries ago worth £300 a year; equivalent, considering the rise of price of salmon, to about £6000 a year of our money. The present rental is £100, so that the decline in value is about sixty-fold. It is calculated that this river is capable of producing about £12,000 a year. The Wear, which, as records prove, furnished the monastic houses of Durham with rich sup 749 plies of 'river venison' for their refectories on fast days, is now so bare of this palatable esculent that all observers of fasts in that city at the present time are compelled to strict abstinence from indigenous salmon. The natural qualities of the Tees are favourable to this fish, the river having its source in mountains, and flowing for about twenty miles through a moorland district. The area drained is about 700 square miles. As is well known, the area of the catchmentbasin of a river, and the amount of rainfall yearly, form, with the extent of spawning ground, the principal tests of its power as a salmon producer. The current must be rapid. In a course of ninety miles, the fall of the Tees is 1600 feet, ensuring a current sufficiently quick to suit salmon ; and the bed of the river, for its entire course above the tidal limit, is mostly gravel, alternates in streams and pools, and is, in short, in all respects suitable for the propagation of fish. Yet although other rivers with smaller catchment-basins produce several thousand pounds sterling a year, the Tees yields an insignificant sum. Natural adaptation, with freedom from artificial obstacles, forming the salmon-producing capability of a river, some small streams are more productive than large ones. The Devonshire Avon, though its catchment-area is nearly one hundred-fold less than that of the Thames, is now alive with salmon, its natural qualities being excellent, the stream having a granite bottom, and being moreover uninjured by mines or weirs. Unfortunately, an extraordinary close time is in use here-viz., from the 15th of January to the 6th of May. How the fish have survived the effects of this injudicious regulation, which permits them to be taken during the spawning time, is a wonder; and obviously so powerful for recovery is the constitution of this river, that if its fence-time was better regulated, and if the practice of night-spearing were put down, it might have thousands of fish where now it has only hundreds. |