And now enters a sporting friend of mine, a 'practical angler,' who comes with a very familiar tale of woe. The state of the salmon fisheries is deplorable: if the Department does not fulfil its obvious duties there will not be a salmon in Ireland outside a museum in ten years more. He has lived for forty-five years on the banks of a salmon river, and he knows that I don't fish. But this much the conversation reveals: his own knowledge of the subject is confined to the piece of river he happens to own, the gossip he hears at his club, and the ideas of the particular poacher he employs as his gillie. His suggested remedy is the abolition of all netting. But I have to tell him that only the day before I had a deputation from the net fishermen in the estuary of this very river, whose bitter complaint was that this 'poor man's industry' was being destroyed by the mackerel and herring nets round the coast, and--I thought my friend would have a fit--by the way in which the gentlemen on the upper waters neglect their duty of protecting the spawning fish! Some belonging to the lower water interest carried their scepticism as to the efficacy of artificial propagation to the length of believing that hatcheries are partially responsible for the decrease. As so often happens, the opposing interests, disagreeing on all else, find that best of peacemakers, a common enemy, in the Government. The Department is responsible--for two opposite reasons, it is true, but somehow they seem to confirm each other. We must labour to find some other common ground, starting from the recognition that the salmon fisheries are a national asset which must be made to subserve the general public interest. I assure my friend that when all parties make their proper contribution in effort and in cash, the Department will not be backward in doing their part. At the end of this interview a messenger brings a telegram for 'himself' from a stockowner in a remote district.[47] 'My pigs,' runs one of the most businesslike communications I ever received, 'are all spotted. What shall I do?' I send it to the Veterinary Branch, which, with the Board of Agriculture in England, is engaged in a scheme for staying the ravages of swine fever, a scheme into which the late Mr. Hanbury threw himself with his characteristic energy. The problem is of immense importance, and the difficulty is not mainly quadrupedal. Unless the police 'spot' the spotted pigs, we too often hear nothing about them. I am sure it must be daily brought home to the English Board, as it is to the Irish Department, that an enormous addition might be made to the wealth of the country if our veterinary officers were intelligently and actively aided, in their difficult duties for the protection of our flocks and herds, by those most immediately concerned.