THE ATLANTIC SALMON. 535 



the country began to disturb that repose ; and, as the population 

 increased, the solitude and quiet of the fish were more and more invaded, 

 until ultimately the clangor of machinery, the tumult of business, and, 

 with far greater effect than all the rest, the jarring of the engines of 

 steamboats and their fierce disturbance, expelled the salmon from their 

 ancient and loved haunts. 



In regard to the effect of steamboats on the salmon-fishery, the Hon. 

 Thomas B. Watson, of Peru, Clinton County, communicates to me the 

 following statements, which he received from an aged man whose whole 

 life has been devoted to fishing. He says that the salmon run from the 

 lake into the rivers daring the night, and that he has frequently seen 

 them, when a steamer was merely crossing the mouth of a stream, so 

 excited by alarm and panic at the noise and agitation as to rush im- 

 petuously over a shallow bar into the deep water of the lake. The same 

 person informed Judge Watson that the opinion prevailed among old 

 fishermen, when the decadence of the salmon-supply first began to be 

 observed, that it was caused by their disturbance on the Richelieu River 

 from the steamboats ; and, in support of this idea, he said that he was 

 engaged in 1838 in capturing between fifty and sixty salmon in the Au 

 Sable River, and that no salmon had appeared in that stream for the 

 fifteen preceding years, and by a singular coincidence, which confirmed 

 in their minds this theory, the only steamer plying on the Richelieu had 

 been burned the same season. However correct may be this conclusion, 

 any impediment or disturbance which may have existed in that narrow 

 and shallow stream may be enumerated among the possible causes of 

 the expulsion of salmon from the lake. That all fishes (and the fact 

 may be exhibited especially in a family so sensitive and shy in its 

 nervous organization as the salmon) are frightened from their haunts by 

 noise and agitation has been sufficiently demonstrated on Lake Cham- 

 plain in the recent construction of the New York and Canada Railroad. 

 This work was attended by heavy explosions near the waters, which fish 

 had been accustomed to frequent in great copiousness. I have under- 

 stood that immediately afterward these resorts were generally, at least 

 for the time, abandoned by the fish. The quiet the salmon constitution- 

 ally delights in and its sense of security have been invaded, with con- 

 sequences still more effective, by another agency, which became aug- 

 mented by the increase of population. I refer to the persistent and 

 inexorable hunting that not only assailed them by the net and the jack- 

 light and spear, but pursued them to their gravelly beds and breeding- 

 grounds, and there not only ruthlessly slaughtered the mothers and 

 millions of the embryo, but drove innumerable multitudes in panic and 

 alarm from the waters, probably never to return to their former haunts. 



Another reason may be assigned, and I conceive with much force, for 

 the salmon relinquishing localities which were once their favorite 

 reports. They love, as I have stated, to seek cool waters, and this grati- 

 fication they attained in the normal condition of the region ; but when 



