This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1874 edition. Excerpt: ...rivers and lakes. The recent prosecutions for trout-poaching have been not only very few in number, but comparatively insignificant in character, consisting chiefly of cases where one fish had been captured in apparent unpremeditated thoughtlessness; and for many years back there has not occurred any of those ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1874 edition. Excerpt: ...rivers and lakes. The recent prosecutions for trout-poaching have been not only very few in number, but comparatively insignificant in character, consisting chiefly of cases where one fish had been captured in apparent unpremeditated thoughtlessness; and for many years back there has not occurred any of those instances of wholesale and deliberate poaching which were unfortunately too common in days of yore. It is to be hoped that the improvement is only partly attributable to statutory influence, and that, to some extent at least, it may be accredited to the increased intelligence and more industrious and " law-abiding " habits of our working classes. From whatever cause the improvement arises, it must be satisfactory to every right-thinking person to know that this peculiar local failing of nearly three centuries' standing has at length all but disappeared; and there cannot be a doubt that the increased and still increasing success of the Lochleven fishings during recent years arises in a great measure from the diminution of poaching on the spawning streams of the lake. The extraordinary fecundity of fish is well known, and if the quantity of ova in a spawning Lochleven trout is estimated at the rate generally allowed to all orders of the Salmonidce--1000 ova to every pound the parent fish weighs--the enormous injury to the fishings resulting from the slaughter of a very few of the spawning trout may be approximated. In fact, it is considered that proper protection of the tributaries of the loch during the spawning season is, in addition to the regular systematic destruction of the pike, all that is really required to develop, to their fullest extent, the fish-producing capabilities of Lochleven, and that so long as the requisite precautions for...
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