History of Madeley: including Ironbridge, Coalbrookdale, and CoalportRandall, John
History
History of Madeley: including Ironbridge, Coalbrookdale, and Coalport
Randall, John
Madeley (Shropshire, England) -- History
“Take a salmon bred in the Shin, (one of the duke’s salmon rivers) in
Sutherland, and set it at liberty in the Tweed, at Berwick, and it
will not ascend the Tweed, but will if not slain in transitu, return
to its native river, the Shin, traversing hundreds of miles of ocean
to do so. Is this wonderful! No more wonderful than,—
“The swallow twittering from its straw-built shed,”
migrating, on the first appearance of winter from these shores, to
the warm atmosphere, yielding insect food, of Africa, and returning
to its natal locality in the spring, to live and give life in the
temperate summer of a temperate zone.”
It is owing to this unconquerable instinct we are indebted for the few
salmon we get in the upper Severn. At the spawning season they make
their appearance in the estuary, and, so long as they meet with no
insurmountable obstruction to their progress, will traverse miles for the
deposition of their ova. Slight obstacles in the way will not deter
them, and it is only after repeated failures they give up; they swim
through rapids, leap from seven to ten feet high, and push on to their
destination through powerful floods of descending water; and it is only
at insurmountable barriers to their progress that they fall a prey to the
rapacity of poachers, who have been known at one time to have taken cart
loads with spears.
Since the above was in type Mr. Frank Buckland and Mr. S. Walpole, as
Inspectors of Salmon fisheries, have issued their report, wherein we
learn that the Severn is much polluted in its upper waters by refuse from
mines, and in the middle and lower waters by the refuse from
manufactories and town sewage; and that out of the 290 miles of spawning
ground which the Severn possesses, only 75 are accessible to the fish.
Mr. Willis Bund, the chairman of the Severn Board, supplied Mr. Buckland
with the following figures as to the value of the Severn salmon
fisheries. The figures show the value of the fish caught:
1869 £8,006
1870 13,000
1871 11,200
1872 8,000
1873 10,000
1874 10,500
1875 10,590
1876 14,560
1877 12,880
1878 8,978
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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