provided by the bill now passing into law.  Again,
the water-bailiffs, whom hitherto any obstinate
holder of ground by the water-side might warn
off his land as trespassers, are to have lawful
right of passage, with power to examine all dams,
nets, and so forth.  These water-bailiffs will be
under the control of local boards of conservators
appointed by the courts of quarter session.

Mr. Ffennell and Mr. Eden, the Inspectors
of Salmon Fishery, have during the last year
called meetings in all the chief fishing districts,
and have found, with the most trivial exceptions,
universal desire for the scheme of amendments
now proposed.  Mr. Eden tells us that
resolutions hostile to it were only carried
at Newcastle-Emlyn and at Carmarthen, and
the persons opposing it were of the same class
at both places.  The Towey and Tivey are
fished to a degree unknown elsewhere by coracle
nets.  The net, resembling an Irish snap net, is
kept stretched between two coracles floating
down the stream; when a fish strikes, it is
instantly lifted into one or other of the coracles.
Miles and miles of fresh water, especially in the
Tivey, are swept nightly by these nets.  At
Newcastle-Emlyn, coracle men said there were
no persons who knew better than themselves that
the river wanted protection.  There were the
nets used at the bar of the river below them
by "persons who wished to get the river all to
themselves," and somebody must stop the killing
of smolts or fry above them.  Above and below
protection was needed, but "they were quiet
people, who did not like surveillance and law."

At Carmarthen, the men generally declared
that the last season had been remarkably good,
and that the fisheries had gradually improved
since the act of 1861 was passed.  They only
objected to such of the provisions of that act
as touched themselves.  The season was too
short; the mesh of the net too large; the
weekly close time altogether bad, and so much
of the public water as was suited for their kind
of fishing ought not to be touched by any other
kind of net.  It was stated that thirteen or
fourteen seine or draft nets were now used in
the tideway, below their usual fishing-ground,
where only three or four were worked a short
time since, and this proof of improvement was
regarded as a grievous wrong.  It was strongly
urged that restrictions should be set upon the
use of these nets (possibly there may be reason
in the request), and loud complaints were made
that the smolts were killed in thousands by the
men above.  Protection, therefore, was necessary;
but "it was reasonable that its cost
should fall on other men," and the gentleman
through keepers, or the public by the police,
should be at the expense of preserving the
river, that was to say so much of it as they,
the coracle men, did not use; that part of it
required no watching whatever.

The poaching in and about Carmarthen is a
serious evil. The town has a population of about
ten thousand, and a police force of eleven men;
but nothing is done to enforce the fishery law.
The poachers all start from the town; return
there, bring their fish, and sell them publicly there,
in season and out, clean or foul; and there have
not been two convictions for the last ten years.

As to the poisoning of salmon streams by
waste of mines and factories, that can usually
be prevented.  The Nanty lead mine on the
Herefordshire Wye at first killed some of the
fish, and burnt the tails and fins of others;
although catchpits had been constructed for the
retention of the refuse water till the noxious
waste had settled.  When the insufficiency of
his catchpits became known to the mine owner,
he immediately ordered their extension, and
last summer, though the season had been dry,
and any refuse discharge would have been less
diluted than usual, nobody heard of any
poisoned fish.  That is a large lead mine.  The
Devon Great Consols is a large copper mine
also worked by a river-side without any injury
whatever to the fish.  The new system of
washing and converting into coke the small
coal that used to be burnt at the pit's mouth,
fouls river-beds, but here too the catchpit
system is all that is required to save the rivers
from pollution.  The refuse of paper-works is
very injurious to fish, but it is also a valuable
manure, and paper-makers are discovering the
use of it upon their land, or, if they have no
land of their own, find sale for it among the
farmers.  In gas-works every product —the
ammoniacal liquor, the tar, the refuse lime—
has a known use and value, and as the prudent
manager of a gas-works at Gloucester told one
of the fishery inspectors, "he could not afford
to poison the Severn with substances producing
him a return."  The same is true of other
works.  As there is no waste in nature, so also
there should be no waste in a well-managed
operation of man's industry.  We may have
mines, mills, factories on the banks of our salmon
rivers, but if we make a right use of our wits,
we shall hardly displace thereby a single fish.
And then nothing is needed but respect for the
natural conditions of the salmon's life, so that
it may be left free to increase and multiply
while yielding us a constantly increasing harvest.
By doing that very incompletely, we have
caused in three years a large increase in the
number of the salmon that come up our English
streams.  By doing it, as now proposed,
completely, every English salmon river will again
become a silver mine, with its vein of living
treasure so far inexhaustible, that it becomes
richer instead of poorer year by year.

             NEW WORK BY MR. DICKENS,
In Monthly Parts, uniform with the Original Editions of
              "Pickwick," "Copperfield," &c.
      Now publishing, PART XIII., price 1s., of
                OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
               BY CHARLES DICKENS.
         IN TWENTY MONTHLY PARTS.
     With Illustrations by MARCUS STONE.
London: CHAPMAN and HALL, 193, Piccadilly.