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distrusted by the nation. To the uncertain and inconsequent action of this heterogeneous body, Louis Napoleon opposed an egotism pure and simple, a calm and complete self-confidence, chequered by no doubts, and hampered by no scruples. The constitution brought him into continual collisions with the Assembly, in which he had all the advantage given by singleness of will and purpose. The patience and dissimulation which his exile had sufficiently taught him were all he required for the development. He had but to profess the profoundest unselfishness, and seize every opportunity for self-aggrandizement: he could thus, while gradually consolidating his own power, and bringing the Assembly into contempt, contrive always to be or appear in the right. Perhaps the greatest blot in his selfish policy was the dismissal in October, 1849, of the ministry in which Tocqueville held a portfolio. The step was necessary for his ends: but it was impossible to find a plausible excuse for it. The ministry had passed successfully through a period of great difficulty: and, as Tocqueville says, there was actually a danger of constitutional government again becoming popular. Imperialist writers tell us, that "the "elected one responded to the national "wish that he should have more freedom of action". -a reason at once felicitous and frank.

At length Tocqueville's worst expectations were realized by the 2d of December. He was at his post in the National Assembly on that day: and from a letter he wrote to the Times soon after (republished in the English edition), supplemented by his conversations, we get a vivid idea of those memorable scenes. The noble indignation he expresses in the letter at that signal outrage to law and liberty, was shared by many: but there were few who mourned its effects so deeply and so long He complains affectingly in his later letters

of the state of moral isolation in which he finds himself: that his contemporaries have ceased to care for what he still loves passionately that they solace themselves for its loss with tranquillity and material comfort, while he is destitute even of sympathy in his sadness-sympathy, which was to him almost a necessity of life. It moved him especially to see the coldness with which England, the nurse of liberty, looked on the enslavement of France: the arrogant contempt of his countrymen, as though unworthy to be free, or even happier as slaves: the selfish indifference at the tyranny, followed in a year or two by blind approval and applause of the tyrant. "Et tu, Brute," is the tone of several of Tocqueville's later letters to England.

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Reduced to political inaction, Tocqueville adopted the only method left him of serving his country. He chose a period of the past, fraught with instruction for the present, and devoted to its study all the powers of his ripened intellect. The result of this work, the volume "L'Ancien Régime," is but a fragment yet it shows a decided improvement on his former book, both in style and matter, and is equally likely to have an enduring reputation. From the midst of this work he was snatched away by a sudden illness, in the spring of 1859. He left behind him, besides his writings, an example bright in itself, and especially valuable to the present generation-the example of one who combined the merits of the man of thought and the man of action; of one who, possessing all the graces and refinements of modern civilization, its enlarged knowledge, its enlightened moderation, its universal tolerant philanthropy, yet fashioned his life according to an ideal with mediæval constancy and singleness of purpose, and displayed a passionate patriotism and an ardent love of freedom worthy of a hero of antiquity.

A SLICE OF SALMON.

BY HERBERT F. HORE.

LORD DERBY remarked lately that he hardly knew a session of parliament without its Salmon Bill. No fewer

than three bills of this class were brought forward during last session : each of the Three Kingdoms appealing to senatorial wisdom to improve the laws of salmon fishing.

This tentative legislation is as ancient as it is incessant, dating so far back as Magna Charta, which forbade the use of the apparatus of that rude age for taking salmon in rivers. Of late years, salmonfishery legislation has proved successful to a considerable degree in the instance of Ireland; and it will be but justice to Great Britain that "Green Erin of Streams" shall not have the monopoly of any valuable law. The present movement in the question under consideration is based on the proposal to adapt the Irish system to the British and Scottish river fisheries.

Obviously, legislation about the salmo salar has been unceasing because of the uncertainty and, therefore, the errors and controversies respecting both the habits of the animal and the best modes of taking it for, owing to the general ignorance of the natural causes on which production of this fish depends, our laws concerning it were made, on some points, antagonistic to nature; and, moreover, the lawyers, on whom the framing of the enactments devolved, seem to have thought more of preserving rights in private piscaries than of preserving and increasing the brood of salmon for the benefit of the public. Again, the antagonism of the sea salmonfishery interest to the river one increased the confusion, by contradictory statements. Thus, some savans on the one side styled the salmon a sea fish, because it feeds in salt water-though, on the same principle, a Highland stot, bred in Glenwithershins and fed in Yorkshire,

might be called an English bullock. Narrowly viewed, the quarrel closely resembles the famous fabled dispute as to the oyster, being a question as to right of property in a fish; and, thus regarded, is seen to lie in a nutshell, which, however, is hard to crack. For, in point of fact, and therefore of law, a salmon is no man's property until it is caught. It is one of the feræ naturæ. According to Gaelic law, every unmarked animal was considered wild, and as such free and fair game. English law, from the time of the Great Charter, has always favoured the natural law of freedom, which is manifestly best adapted for the multiplication of the creature under contemplation; and that law refused to consider even river fishes as annexis or connexis terræ, or to sanction an exclusive right to them. The justice of this abstention from giving a personal title to what may be called aquatic gameunattached to land-is so clear that one hardly need support it by adducing the analogy that a partridge cannot be said to be a natural pertinent of water. The fish's power of motion gives her a freedom analogous to that of the bird's-for, at every swell of the river, unless a very trifling one, she moves upwards nearer the spawning places; so that no landowner on a river like the Tweed, the Shannon, or the Severn, can reckon upon preserving his particular part of the stream. By no stretch of prerogative can a landlord, as owner of the soil which forms the bed of an unnavigable river, be deemed proprietor of the finny tribes within his limits of the superincumbent water; and there is not even an amphibious claim to them when they are found wherever the public can fish from a boat.

For the present, however, we do not propose to dwell on this minor matter of private claims to property in salmon

fishings, but desire to investigate the paramount question, viz., the interest of the public in the greatest possible supply of salmon in its best condition as an article of food. At the same time, since it occurs, as our readers will perceive, that the larger and important matter depends mainly upon legislation, which must be founded on correct opinions as to the minor point, we will proceed to offer a sketch of the habits of salmon, not for its mere sake, as a department of natural history, but to support whatever arguments we shall advance in favour of legislative views calculated to ensure increase of this article of subsistence.

While investigating the natural causes of the production of this fish, to seek in them a guide towards legislation better adapted to the preservation and increase. of the animal, we perused many parliamentary reports and their multitudinous evidence on the subject, and were struck not only by the general absence of knowledge of the true nature, instincts, habits, and migratory movements of the creature in question, but with the contradictory character of the testimony given by experienced parties. In this word, parties, however, we find the clue to the origin of these conflicting statements, since the two interested factions, viz., the owners of river fishings, employing moving nets and rods, and the proprietors of stationary nets, fixed near the mouths of rivers, seek to obtain changes in the law that shall give them the largest share of salmon-the hugest slice-by propounding views of the fish's nature suitable to the regulations

they respectively demand. In the eyes

of the former party, the salmon is a river fish; in those of the latter, a sea one; and, accordingly, each ichthyologic pleader on either side sets forth a separate theory as to the coveted animal's habits, adapted to support the call for a law calculated to promote the profit of his party. In this quarrel, it is not surprising that every man takes no more than his own view, and sees darkly, as through antique glass, or rather through water-since it is in the nature of the object to conceal itself, so that no man

can trace its movements for half a minute. Yet, notwithstanding this obscurity, one party, the fixed-net fishers, permitted themselves to speak of the intentions and movements of this fish as they would of those of a flock of sheep on a village green. Should we ourselves write over confidently in the ensuing pages, we are open to correction. The facts we shall endeavour to develop bear importantly, as will be seen, on the entire question of these fisheries, especially as to their power of production and profit; and therefore our deductions affect the public interests in this national resource, in a legal point of view; because, if it can be shown that the habits of the fish are directed by design, and not by chance, it follows that the law requires suitable regulation.

The general phenomena presented by this tribe of fishes do not seem sufficiently appreciated; and yet in few cases has the Creator imprinted more remarkable instincts. Of these, the grand migratory movements of salmon from their rivers to the sea, and back again along the coast to the rivers, shoal succeeding shoal, form the particular habit to which we desire to draw the reader's attention. These movements have a near and beautiful analogy in the case of the migrations of the eel tribe, which are in reverse, beginning from the sea to the river. A close observer assures us that the following interesting evolutions occur when eels come in from the sea. The aggregate shoal, about to ascend the inland streams, moves up the shore of the river in the form of a long, dark, rope-like body, in shape not unlike an enormous specimen of the animals which compose it. On reaching the first tributary, a portion, consisting of the number of eels adequate for peopling this stream, detaches itself from the main body and passes up; and, in the subsequent onward passage of the shoal, this marvellous system of detaching, on reaching the mouths of brooks, a proportionate quantity of the great advancing swarm, is repeated, until the entire number has been suitably provided with rivulets to revel in. Such

being the wonderful instinct by which Nature ordains that each stream shall be provided with a competent number of this migratory creature, our readers will more readily give credence to the theory we shall presently deduce regarding the movements of "the monarch of the brook." Prior, however, to propounding our doctrine, it will be well to demolish some erroneous dogmas laid down by the party known in this controversy as the fixed-net interest; a party to which we are by no means hostile, save so far as we are opposed to mistaken notions about the fish, and to whatever injurious legislation mistakes have given birth to.

About forty years ago, when fixed nets were first introduced, their owners found it requisite to overcome the popular prejudice against the use of these monopolizing engines, in order to shield. the valuable property in them from application of the prohibitory principle in Magna Charta. Ranged against them was the old river interest, with its band of bereaved fishermen, whose cause was eloquently advocated at that very time in "Redgauntlet." The new party, however, was powerful, and made itself more so by advancing several assertions in favour of what it fondly dubbed, "the improved method "-the boldest argument being that salmon is a sea fish; and this notion was lustily maintained, since, were it true, the newlyinvented contrivances might be declared to be acting where nature intended this tribe of fishes to be captured. Unable to deny that, if salmon invariably ascend rivers, the take in sea nets must occasion a corresponding diminution in the river fisheries, these usurpers, or absorbers of the river produce, sought to evade the loud complaints raised against their detrimental occupation, by starting a novel natural history theory. One of their new ideas was, that "there

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"market supply." But of what nature are these suppositious salmon ? Their new friends, who would rescue them from the teeth of seals and porpoises, announced that many of the " sea species of salmon" either are barren, and therefore do not desire to enter a river for the spawning purpose, or are content to spawn in the sea. In short, the point was, to prove that the creatures in question did not necessarily breed in rivers, since, if they bred only in rivers, seanets cannot add to the market supply, as these machines can only catch by intercepting what otherwise would pass up stream. To carry this indispensable point, some witnesses, on examination before Parliamentar Committees, went so far as to say they believed that the disputed animal deposits, under some circumstances, as when it is shut out from fresh water, its ova or roe in salt water. Yet no evidence was adduced as to this supposed fact, important as it issince, were the assertion true, much law, care, and expense, in the matter of conservation or protection would be unnecessary, because there would be less need for protecting the creature when on its inland spawning-beds. The dispute was hotly and keenly carried on: canny fishers in the fixed-net interest, pronounced as their opinion, that "salmon come from the sea," and added, when farther pressed, that this fish comes from the north," just as woodcocks are vulgarly believed to come from the moon. Manifestly, argued this party, the salmon is a sea fish, for it always fattens, and sometimes spawns, in the briny deep; and, moreover, our nets cannot be said to deprive any particular river of its pseudo produce. Every experiment, however, has shown the fallacy of the idea that salmon ova can vivify in salt water. Bent upon having this animal considered as a sea fish, this piscatorial party also advanced the notion that it resorts indifferently to any river, and that not necessarily, as for the spawning purpose, but with a sanatory object, viz., to clear itself of sea lice-insects which are sometimes found on new-run fish; and these speculative

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fishermen pronounced that a salmon so afflicted, having taken a freshwater dip, and having thus rid itself of those infesting parasites, returned to the ocean. Of this retrograde movement on the part of the animal there is no proof, further than that the creature is sometimes caught in the ebb chambers of stakenets in estuaries. Yet this phenomenon is easily accounted for by the fact, that the fish, whilst waiting for a flood, hang in the tideway, moving up and down with the current, and thus find their way into the ebb traps. The migratory ascension of salmon cannot be accounted for by a conjecture of that vague sort; which is only to be paralleled by an assertion that the tribe of migratory birds, as swallows and pigeons, are impelled by fleas in their flight. Certainly, there is some piquancy in the argument; but it robs our pet fish of instinct, by implying that it is driven from sea to river and back again, like a shuttlecock.

In our view, the creature under controversy is both a sea and river fish, yet has its belongings; for it returns to the stream in which it was bred, like the swallow to her parent's nest, the bee to its hive, and the pigeon to its dove-cot. It may, therefore, be said to appertain to its particular river; yet only by natural law-which we are not inclined to allude to by way of enhancing any private claims to right of property, and to which we refer merely to remark, that the fixed-net party have attempted to overthrow this old view of the habits of the fish in question. Seen simply scientifically, the salmon is indeed a migratory, gregarious, and pairing animal, because it is bred in brooks, where it does not find sufficient food, but which it must revisit to breed; hence it proceeds in shoals down to its feedinggrounds, and returns in the same arrangement to its spawning-grounds, where the collective assembly scatter and form into pairs. Similarly, when migraSimilarly, when migratory birds reach their destination, they disperse and pair, the gregarious instinct being overcome by the pairing impulse.

No. 25.-VOL. V.

Salmon resemble herrings, in being both gregarious and migratory. In the sea they move about in separate shoals— a fact from which the interesting theory is deduced, that each collection belongs not merely to the great river down which it originally descended to the sea, but even to the tributary stream where its members came to life. Hatched in separate rivulets, the fry pass down them to the ocean, yet have the instinct of returning in distinct bands to their respective streams. Each shoal, therefore, may be said to resemble an ancient Highland clan, to whom their own valley was their special country; for it is believed that every tributary of a river has a variety of the salmon species peculiar to itself, and which returns to it regularly from the sea. The difference

between the salmon of certain rivers can be recognised by practised eyes at a glance. In evidence before a former committee, Mr. Little, a most experienced stake-net fisher-the father, indeed, of the system-admitted that, if salmon entered any river indifferently, there would be no distinct breeds belonging to particular streams; and he referred to the notorious difference between the fish of three rivers, which fall into the same bay-namely, the Bann, Bush, and Foyle. The least initiated epicure, sauntering down Bond Street, cannot fail, in passing Groves' shop, to discriminate between Dutch and Scotch salmon. Our fly-fishing friends, sharp-eyed fellows, assure us they can see distinctions in the shapes and spots of the latter commodity, which mark them as the produce of certain rivers. And this is not surprising, considering the infinite variety of all other animal life.

The last point in our argument seems conclusive. If salmon entered rivers merely as chance directed, a large stream might not render more fish than a small one; and thus the Tay, which possesses the greatest power of all the Scottish rivers as a salmon-producer-because she pours the greatest quantity of fresh water into the ocean, and has the largest area of tributaries, with an immense extent of spawning-ground-could not

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