If Mr. Horsfall will do me the honour to come and see me, I will show him an efficient fish-pass which has been in operation forty years.  It may suggest some ideas to him, and he may be able to suggest some improvements in it which I should be glad to receive.

I am, Gentlemen,
Your obedient Servant,
THOMAS GARNETT.

* * * * *

LOW MOOR, 4th January, 1865.

DEAR SIR,—­As I believe Mr. Eden, the Commissioner of Salmon fisheries, is visiting various districts connected with Salmon rivers in England and Wales, with a view of explaining the proposed alterations and additions to the bill of 1861, and as I think from what I have learnt that the proposed alterations and additions will not be satisfactory to the upper proprietors of Salmon rivers, I wish to call your attention to the matter, that, if he should come into this district, the gentlemen interested may be able to point out to him how far these alterations are from meeting their wishes.  Supposing that the new bill (as published in the “Field” newspaper, and explained and commented on by Mr. Eden) is to be understood as a government measure and one in which they will allow of no alterations, I maintain that it is very objectionable both from what it omits and what it purposes to do.

To begin with the former, or, in other words, to take the recommendations of the Worcester meeting as the groundwork of new legislation, it does not touch on several of them; they were, so far as I remember (for I have no memoranda to refer to) an extension of the weekly and annual close time—­minimum penalties:  —­a close time for Trout, and a right of way on the banks of Salmon rivers for all water-bailiffs, duly appointed, without their being deemed guilty of trespass; and a tax on fishery nets and implements, for the purpose of defraying the expenses of protection.

Now, so far as I understand the bill as proposed, the only one of these recommendations included in it is the tax.  I am wrong in this—­the taxation is not included in the bill, but was suggested by Mr. Eden at the meeting he attended lately at Chester.  The bill proposes that the choice of conservators shall be vested in the magistrates at quarter sessions, and the conservators shall have power to expend all the funds raised by voluntary subscriptions for certain purposes mentioned in the act.  But Mr. Eden suggested at Chester that if these funds were inadequate the conservators should have the power of supplementing them by a rate on the owners and lessees of fisheries in proportion to their extent.  Now one man may have an estate on the banks of a river extending for miles from which he derives little or no revenue; while another may have a fishery not extending more yards than the other does miles, but from which he derives a revenue of as many pounds as the other does pence.  If Mr. Eden’s meaning is lineal extent, I feel very sure it will not meet with the approval of the