st 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.

I think with you that the Calder can never become a Salmon river,
so long as manufactories flourish on its banks, and it is not
desirable that it ever should become so at their expense; but even
in the Calder (and its tributaries) a little care would prevent
immense mischief. Some people at Church, a few years ago, very
carelessly pushed a quantity of poisonous matter into the Hyndburn
brook, and the first thunderstorm that followed carried it down
the Calder into the Ribble, and poisoned all the fish between
Calder foot and Ribchester. Take another instance of carelessness
in the Ribble, the emptying of the gas-holder tank at Settle,
which when turned into the river killed nearly all the fish
between that town and Mitton. Several other instances occur to me,
but these two are sufficient to show the great mischief occasioned
by avoidable neglect and carelessness. Such mischief should not be
perpetrated with impunity.

The act of 1861 was very good as far as it went, notwithstanding
some oversights; but it did not go far enough. It did not give to
the upper riparian proprietors such an interest in the fish as
they are entitled to, nor is the interest they now have sufficient
to induce them to exert themselves in the