had been engaged in, required the full attention
of one man; and to manage the Manchester
goods department of our firm was quite enough
work for another.  We began now to think
much more of the rise and fall in shares than of
the rates of exchange at Hamburg, or the price
bills on London were selling at in Marseilles.
My partner was a director of a bank, a finance
company, and two marine insurance offices,
which together took up all the time he could
spare from running in and out of his stockbroker's
to know how things were looking, and
whether the shares he held were rising or falling.
By degrees our proper business began to
get into a muddle.  Our Smyrna house
telegraphed that they had an acceptance for two
thousand pounds coming due in a few days, and
they had not yet received funds from us to take
it up.  Thanks to a timely telegram, and a local
friend in the place, the bill was met, and our
credit saved: though affairs of this kind always
get known sooner or later in a gossiping Eastern
town, and are sure to do harm.  Even in London
we forgot on one or two occasions to provide for
bills falling due, until the very last moment; and
this of course had a bad effect on our banker,
the man of all others with whom we wished to
stand well.  Our business fell off by degrees;
but how that happened, and what befel us and
it, must form the subject of another paper.

                  SWIMMING SILVER.

THE Rights of Salmon were included among
those of Englishmen in Magna Charta.  They
have a prominent clause to themselves in that
broadsheet, and they have been legislated for,
like fellow-subjects, ever since.  Benjamin
Franklin gave us a man's view of a salmon, when
he defined it as a bit of silver pulled out of the
water.  The population of the salmon in the
waters of the three kingdoms ought far to
exceed that of the men on the dry land.  In our
waters, if we suffer them to be so, they are
thoroughly at home, and will increase and
multiply while paying us a splendid tribute
of their silver.  In old times our unpolluted
streams were so full of salmon that our own
salmon was dried as a staple winter store in
monasteries, or for the provisioning of English
armies.  By spoiling of the water, and by reckless
interference with the course of salmon nature,
the fish have been turned out of some rivers,
and were not long since rapidly disappearing
out of others, while, in all, their population was
reduced as that of a nation might be after a
hundred years' war.

But, four years ago, a salmon fishery act was
passed, which, as between Englishmen and
English salmon, may be termed the Peace of
'Sixty-one. The purport of this treaty was, that the
salmon were to be aided, as much as possible, in
their passage up the rivers to their gravelly
spawning-beds, and were not to be attacked while
spawning, or during their return as spent fish to
recover health and fatness in the sea.

By this time there have been found out all the
chief flaws in that treaty.  On the whole, it has
been no failure.  In many of our rivers the
salmon are establishing new and strong colonies,
but still the peace is kept imperfectly.  The
temptation is great to the greedy and the
thoughtless to fish up the silver they see
swimming in the water, and to do it without any
regard to times and seasons.  For their own
immediate gain, there are men at the mouths of
rivers who will stop an entire colony of fish
ascending to its breeding- grounds.  Up the
streams, there are men who will seize the spent
fish and the little smolt or child salmon.  Every
salmon-stream is as the goose that laid the
golden eggs, and the rational cry is, let us take
our fair shares of the eggs, but let nobody have
a right to kill the goose.  Scotland, Ireland, and
the river Tweed, having fishery acts of their own,
the act of 'sixty-one applied to England only.
And now, though the salmon-streams are alike
throughout the three kingdoms, they are under
a jumble of three different sorts of salmon law.

This is the gist of our law which is being
altered in a few respects by a bill now passing
through parliament.  You shall pour nothing
into salmon waters that will poison fish.  The
penalty will become heavy if you persist in doing
so, unless you prove that, at a reasonable cost,
you have tried the best means of exercising a
lawful right in the stream without hurt to its
purity.  You shall use no light for salmon catching,
and no spear or like instrument.  You shall
use no fish roe as bait.  You shall spread no nets
narrower than two inches from knot to knot.
Unless you have a right, by grant, charter, or
immemorial usage, you will be fined ten pounds
a day while fishing salmon with " fixed engines,"
as stake-nets, bag-nets, putts, putchers, &c., or
nets secured by anchors, or otherwise fixed to
the soil, in any inland or tidal waters.  There
shall be no dams used for catching, or assisting
in the catch of salmon, except such fishing
weirs and fishing mill-dams as are
lawfully in use at the time of the act's passing.
Penalty five pounds or less, and a pound or less
for each salmon caught, with forfeit of the fish,
and of the traps, nets, and contrivances used for
the fishing.  You shall in all your lawful fishing
weirs and dams have gaps and fish passes, with
such a constant flow of water as will enable the
salmon to pass up and down.  In the head-race
or tail-race of any mill, or within fifty yards
below any dam, unless there be a sufficient fish
pass, you shall not catch salmon otherwise than
with a rod and line, on penalty of fine and
forfeiture. When, for water supply of towns or
other purposes, artificial streams are drawn from
a salmon river, proper gratings shall be put up,
so as, without hindering the passage of boats,
to prevent the salmon fry from passing into
these canals or artificial channels.  Penalty for
neglect a pound a day.  After six months, five
pounds a day.  Under forfeiture aud penalty of
five pounds or less for each fish, you shall not
catch or buy or sell unseasonable salmon,
except it be for scientlfic purposes.  You shall