Or, thirdly, the annual close time for net and rod fishing might commence a month earlier than at present; say net fishing to close on the 1st of August, and rod fishing on the 1st of October.  Any of these measures would give the upper proprietors a much better supply of fish than they now have.  They all, I think, deserve consideration.  One thing at least is certain, that unless the upper proprietors have a better share of the fish than they have at present, they will soon cease to take an interest in their preservation.

To Colonel J. Wilson Patten, M.P.

* * * * *

LOW MOOR, 10th January, 1865.

MY DEAR SIR,—­I shall be very glad if I can induce you to read my opinions on the Salmon question.  It is one which I think may become of even national importance, if properly managed.  But the sad tinkering it has hitherto received in the nine hundred and ninety-nine Acts of Parliament wholly or partly devoted to the subject makes me almost hopeless about future legislation.  Yet it seems to me that the only way to greatly increase the breed of Salmon is so simple and obvious, that its not having been adopted long since can only be accounted for by supposing that all the parties interested in the matter are like the man in the fable, who killed the goose that laid the golden eggs.

Hitherto the law has never properly recognized the claims of the upper riparian proprietors.  These men have all the trouble and expense of rearing and protecting the young fish, whilst the owners of estuary fisheries, men who never lift a hand nor spend a penny in taking care of the brood, take above ninety per cent. of the grown Salmon when in season; and even then think they are hardly used.  How can it be expected that the upper proprietors should be very earnest in their protection of fish from which they derive little or no benefit, merely acting the part of brood hens and hatching the chickens for the benefit of other people?

In June, 1769, 3,384 Salmon and Salmon Trout were taken at a single haul of the net in the Ribble, near Penwortham.  Now the sea is as wide, and, for anything we know to the contrary, as capable of feeding them as it was a hundred years ago; and the rivers are as capable of breeding and rearing them now as they were at that time; and therefore I do not see why, if proper steps were taken, they should not be as abundant now as they were then.

If we take a sheep or a bullock, and to his first cost add the rent of the land on which he has pastured, and something for insurance and interest on capital, the transaction is not a very profitable one in the long run.  But in the case of the Salmon, we send a little fish down to the sea which is not worth a penny, and he remains there, paying neither rent nor taxes, neither gamekeepers’ nor bailiffs’ wages, costing nothing to anyone, until he returns to the river, worth ten or twenty shillings, as the case may be.  Surely this is a branch of the public wealth that deserves sedulous cultivation.