116 AMERICAN FISH CULTURE. 



some of the fine salmon rivers of New Brunswick or of 

 California. 



If part of the expenditure of the agricultural bureau, 

 which produces no immediate benefit to the country, was 

 appropriated to building an efficient fishway around Niagara 

 Falls, and salmon were introduced by artificial culture into 

 the many fine rivers entering the chain of great lakes 

 above, it is difficult to estimate the numbers that would 

 make the Niagara river a highway. At throng time it 

 would be like the waters below the falls of some of the 

 Oregon rivers, where a spear thrown at random does not 

 fail to impale a salmon. In France such a national enter- 

 prise would not be thought chimerical. 



Within a period of ten years, the salmon fisheries of the 

 British Provinces had declined so much as to create fears 

 of the gradual, but sure extinction of this fish in many 

 rivers. By legislation, strict enforcement of laws provided 

 for their protection, and the erection of a few fishways, this 

 decline has not only been arrested, but the numbers of 

 salmon so much increased, as to bring back the prices at 

 Quebec and Montreal to the point at which they stood 

 twenty years ago. To Mr. W. F. Whitcher, the able and 

 vigilant head of the Fisheries Branch of the Crown Land 

 Department, much credit is due, for his efficient agency in 

 arresting the destruction, and re-instating most of the rivers 

 to their former fruitfulness. The St. Lawrence at this 

 time has eighty-seven tributaries well stocked with salmon. 

 The summer of 1865 was favorable for the salmon fisheries 

 of Canada and New Brunswick. The rod fishing on most 



