Now salmon don't like either snowy water, bridges of ice, or stealthy streams, but a bold, bright, expansive, unimpeded, and accommodating kind of highway to our inland vales. They instinctively regard a modified temperature, and a flowing movement, as great inducements to leave the sea in early winter, instead of waiting until spring; and, in like manner, they avoid "imprisoned rivers" until icy gales have ceased to blow. The consequences are, we may have an extremely early river and a very late one within a few hundred yards of each other, and both debouching from the same line of coast into the sea. Now, in the autumn of 1836, a bill was proposed and brought in by Mr Patrick Stewart and Mr Loch, to amend the preceding Act (9th Geo. IV.) which had repealed that of James I., (1424.) It proceeded on the preamble, that "whereas the sand acts have been found inadequate to the purposes for which they were passed, inasmuch as it is found that our close-time is not suitable for all the salmon fishings and rivers throughout Scotland, and it is expedient that the same should therefore, and in other respects, be altered, modified, and amended." It therefore enacted that different close-times shall be observed in different divisions of Scotland, the whole of which is partitioned into twelve districts, as specified in schedule A referred to in the bill. We do not know how or from whom the necessary information was obtained; but we doubt not it was sedulously sought for, and digested in due form. For example, the boundaries as to time and space of the second district, are as follows:--"From Tarbet Ness aforesaid, to Fort George Point, in the county of Nairn, including the Beaulie Frith and the rivers connected therewith, _except the river Ness_, from the 20th day of August to the 6th day of January, both days inclusive; and for the said river Ness, from the 14th day of July, to the 1st day of December, both days inclusive." This is so far well. But in the ninth district, the definition and directions are:--"From the confines of the Solway Frith to the northern boundary of the county of Ayr, from the 30th day of September to the 16th day of February, both days inclusive." Now most anglers know that the district thus defined, includes streams which vary considerably in their character, and cannot be correctly classed together. Thus the Doon, which draws its chief sources from numerous lakes among the hills, is one of the earliest rivers in the south-west of Scotland, clean fresh-run fish occurring in it by Christmas; while the neighbouring river Ayr, although existing under the same general climatic influence, produces few good salmon till the month of June. It is fed by tributaries of the common kind. The Stinchar, in the same district, is also a late river, being seldom worked by the tacksmen till towards the end of April, and even then few of the fish are worth keeping. Of course, it requires to be closed in