LITMIR.BIZ

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each pike, on the average, as his daily meal, during the months already referred to, engrosses four salmon or bull-trout fry. This, in the course of sixty days, gives an allowance to every individual in Teviot of two hundred and forty smolts; and supposing there are from Ancrumbridge downward, a stretch of water nine or ten miles in length, not more than one thousand pike, the entire number consumed by these, in less than one-sixth of the year, amounts to two hundred and forty thousand, or nearly a quarter of a million of salmon-fry, – a greater number, there is no question, than is killed during the same extent of time by all the angling poachers in the district put together."

      We acknowledge that we must be indiscreet to involve ourselves again in an offensive topic. A hint, however, of our opinion, and we pass away from the subject. The abominable slaughter of "FOUL" fish, perpetrated by people whom we are obliged to repudiate as sportsmen, and whom we are not obliged to recognise as gentlemen, is a shocking, dirty, disreputable mal-practice, to be condemned with unmodified severity of language. Apologies, explanations, palliations, are in vain. The filthy mass which is unrighteously dragged out of the water is not then a fish. It is against the use of nature for the hand of man to touch it. And yet the same man who would with easy indifference "leister" a salmon in that state, teeming with ten thousand thousand lives, shall, on the morrow, in a jury-box, violate his oath by acquitting the guilty in the face of the clearest evidence, because he thinks capital punishments unlawful. Phaugh! Call Mr Stoddart into court as an authoritative witness.

      "I find a number of anglers at one with me in opinion upon this subject; and all who have witnessed night-leistering on Tweed during the autumnal or winter months, will acknowledge that even the romantic character which torch-light and scenery invest it with, fails as an apology for the ignoble, wasteful, and injurious nature of the occupation. In nine cases out of ten, it is pursued, either during the spawning season itself, or when the fish are heavy with roe – when they are red or foul, having lain a considerable time in the river, and, moreover, when they have lost all power of escape, or are cut off from exercising it, both by the lowness of water, and by the circumstance of their being hemmed in, at the head and foot of the pool or place of action, by nets and other contrivances stretched from bank to bank.

      "It can scarcely be credited, but I relate a fact known to many on Tweedside, that, about four or five years ago, upwards of three hundred breeding fish, salmon and grilses, were slaughtered in the course of a single night, from one boat, out of a stretch of water not far from Melrose, two leisters only being employed; and of this number – I allude to the fish – scarcely one was actually fit to be used as food, while by far the greater part of them were female salmon, on the eve of depositing their ova. In the neighbourhood of Kelso, upwards of ninety have frequently been butchered with this implement during a single night, from one boat, – all of them fish in the same rank and unhealthy condition above described. In September 1846, according to the most moderate calculation, no fewer than four thousand spawning fish, consisting chiefly of full-grown salmon, and comprehending the principal breeding stock of the season – those fish which, from their forward state, promised the earliest and most vigorous supply of fry, were slaughtered in Tweed, with the consent, and under the auspices, of the upper holders of fishings, in the manner I speak of. Need it be said, that the injury done to the salmon-fishings in general by this malpractice on the part of two or three lesser proprietors, is incalculable, and, when linked with the doings of poachers during closetime, to which it unquestionably gives encouragement, and the system pursued on Tweed of capturing and destroying the kelts and baggits, it must operate most prejudicially against every plan devised to further the breeding of this highly-prized article of food."

      Simply we shall say, that any body who so leisters fish from this day forward is a BRUTAL BARBARIAN, fit for the society of a Burke or a Hare, who did not venture to immolate their victims till gross physical corruption – the heavy prostration of drunkenness – rendered them in general the easy and stupid prey of a disgusting assassin. Let the leisterer of foul fish be accursed in the sporting calendar.

      Under all circumstances, to be quite candid, we remonstrate against the leister. It is not a fair way of going to work – the fish has no option. There is too much of the tinge of the Venetian bravo in the blow. Less apology must there always be for striking a salmon than for striking a man behind his back. The man who detects the stealthy thrust may turn and smite his enemy. The fish, vigilant happily of the descending trident, can but shift its quarters and swim away. Basking, too, at the moment under the broad beam of the all-rejoicing sun – as motionless, as tranquil, as bright, and as beautiful, as the silver pebbles in the river's bed – why should idle human violence invade and extinguish that unsuspecting repose? At this very instant, while he is in such attitude and mood, fling, if you can, with delicate precision, over his snout the most attractive mottled wing in your book, and then – if the pensive Zoroaster of the stream quits his meditations to swallow your temptation – then hook him, play him, land him, and encreel him; but do not, without any warning, plunge a barbed steel fork into his heart. Or, at this very instant, let the seduction of the triple worm travel athwart his ruminations, and if the glutton shall overcome the sage, then, even in his voracious throat, strike home, and overcome the glutton; but do not hack the noble form with ruffianly prongs of rusty iron —

      "Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods,

      Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds."

      Pr'ythee permit the leister, for the future, to decorate a museum along with other implements of the Cannibal, not the British islands!

      Mr Stoddart must feel neither anger nor surprise if we deliberately avoid not merely any discussion, but even any notice whatever, of theories or speculations, directly or collaterally referring to the breeding or propagation of fishes. We have not been, as the pages of Maga prove, unwatchful of what conjectural philosophy might propose, or ingenious experimentalism might exhibit. We hold some piscine opinions, so curious but so true, that if we could enunciate them in a language intelligible to fish (which ought to be the Finnish dialect,) the liveliest salmon in Norway could not execute summersets sufficiently numerous to express his astonishment at our knowledge. We could likewise put such puzzling objections to the most elaborate and seemingly satisfactory systems, as to demonstrate irrefragably that, in spite of every thing which every body has said about every variety of the salmo race, nobody knows any thing certain as to the age Of Old Parr. But, for one good reason, we shall be discreet and silent. Nobody cares a straw, or a horse-hair, or a thread of gut, whether Stoddart is overthrown, or Shaw is predominant, – nobody, whose sole and laudable object is to enjoy a day's good fishing. The great fact remains – the waters are full of fish. What matter is it whence the fins came or come? The question is not how they got into, but how they are to be taken out of the burn, the river, or the lake? It is not we who mean to go

"Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave;"

      but up out of it we hope to draw many dozens of its peopling swarms. And we desire to learn from Mr Stoddart how best we may, by baits and guileful spells, reach and inveigle, them —

"In their obscured haunts of inmost bowers."

      The companion we want is the Angler's Companion. Now the angler is an individual who sallies out at early dawn, rejoicing, not only in his own strength, and, haply, the strength of a glass of whisky, but in a fishing-basket, or pannier, or bag; in a fishing-rod, or three or four fishing-rods; in a fishing-book, more voluminous in its single volume than the Encyclopædia Britannica; in wading boots and water-proof cloaklets; in a reel, and a gaff, and a landing net, and sometimes a boat; in gut, and in horse hair; in hooks and hackles; in feathers and silk thread; in wax and wire; in leads and floats; in tin boxes of worms, and earthen pots of salmon roe; in minnows, and parr-tails; in swivels and gorge-hooks; in lobs, and in bobs; in ferrules, and in rings; in a brown paper parcel of four large sandwiches, and a pocket flask of six large glasses of sherry; in a dingy coat, and inexpressible unmentionables; and finally, in the best humour, and a shocking bad hat. Is it imaginable that all this can be done, as it is done every day, by any body who has not made up his mind, or who thinks it necessary to know, what fish are, and where they came from? There is no such humbug within him. He goes to the Tweed or the Tay; the Don, or the Conan; to Loch Craggie, or Loch Maree; to Loch Awe, or Loch Etive; to the Clyde, or the Solway; to Loch Doon, or Loch Ken; because all over broad Scotland there is plenty of fish; and because, where-ever

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