Another fertile source of harm to the salmon-fisheries are the fixed engines of capture which so many people think it right to use, and which the Lord Advocate’s Salmon Bill of 1862 left almost _in statu quo_, except that a little power on this part of the salmon question is given to the commissioners appointed to carry out the Act. Stake and bag nets in Scotland are known to have been very destructive, as have the putchers, butts, and trumpets of the English and Welsh rivers. It would be tedious to describe the different fixed engines invented for the capture of salmon; what I desire to show is that they have injured the fisheries. A controversy has been raging in Scotland for some years back on this point of the salmon question, which, there can be no doubt, will ultimately result in their _entire_ extinction. That they have been a most fruitful cause of injury to the fisheries has been proved by a long array of facts and figures. A striking example of the effect of bag-nets occurred with regard to the Tay. The system having been extended to that river, the productiveness of the upper portions of the stream was very speedily affected; and again, shortly after their removal, the fisheries became greatly more productive, as will be seen by and by when it becomes necessary to deal with the figures denoting the rental of that river. Although I have already referred to it, it is most important to note here much more particularly the fact that, with probably the solitary exception of the Tweed (and there the deterioration has only recently been arrested), the size and weight of salmon are annually diminishing, and, as some fishermen think, their condition and flavour also. There can be no doubt that in the golden age of the fisheries they attained much larger proportions than they do now. I need scarcely quote in support of this opinion the fish mentioned by Yarrell, which was exhibited by Mr. Groves, and weighed eighty-three pounds; nor that alluded to by Pennant, which was only ten pounds lighter; nor the fact that in all virgin salmon-rivers the fish average a greater weight than any now taken in the British streams. It is within the memory of anglers that fish of forty pounds were by no means rare in the Scottish rivers; that salmon of thirty pounds and thirty-five pounds weight were quite common; and that the general run of fish were in the aggregate many pounds heavier than those of the present day. Mr. Anderson, the lessee of some of the best salmon-fisheries on the Firth of Forth, a gentleman who is master of his business, is of opinion that the average weight of fish now is reduced to about sixteen pounds; and by the Tweed Tables, the average weight of those killed by the net between July and September, though apparently on the increase, in no month rises to fifteen pounds. How is it, then, that we have no giants of the river in these days? The answer, I think, is simple and convincing.