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A Walk from London to John O'Groat's by Elihu Burritt
page 274 of 313 (87%)
firth at its mouth. But it may be applied in the best sense of
production to the Tay; and not only that, but other terms known to
practical agriculture. Up to the present moment, no river in the
world has been cultivated with more science and success. None has
been sown so thickly with seed-vitalities or produced more valuable
crops of aquatic life. Here salmon are hatched by hand and folded
and herded with a shepherd's care. Here pisciculture, or, to use a
far better and more euphonious word, fish-farming, is carried to the
highest perfection in Great Britain. It is a tillage that must
hereafter take its place with agriculture as a great and honored
industry. If the cold, bald-headed mountains, the wild, stony
reaches of poverty-stricken regions, moor, morass, steppe and
prairie are made the pasturage of sheep innumerable, the thousands
of rivers in both hemispheres will not be suffered to run to waste
through another century. The utilitarian genius of the present age
will turn them into pasturage worth more per acre than the value of
the richest land on their banks. Just think of the pasturage of the
Tay. It rents for 14,000 pounds a year; and those who hire it must
make it produce at least 50,000 pounds, or $240,000 annually. Let
us assume that the whole length of this salmon-pasturage is fifty
miles, and its average width one-eighth of a mile. Then the whole
distance would contain the space of 4,000 square acres, and the
annual rent for fishing would amount to over 3 pounds 13s. per acre.
This would make every fish-bearing acre of the river worth 100
pounds, calculated on the land basis of interest or rent.

Having heard of the Stormontfields' Ponds for breeding salmon, I had
a great desire to see them. They are situated on the Tay, a few
miles above Perth, and are well worthy of the inspection and
admiration of the scientific as well as the utilitarian world. The
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