242 APPENDIX. 



dition. These facts show that particular attention should 

 be shown to these fish, and that their breed should be 

 encouraged as much as possible. This can only be done 

 by allowing the earliest fish to run up free, by opening the 

 fishing at the mouths of rivers a month later than usual. 

 But the very facts above detailed afford also the cause of 

 these fish being much more keenly sought after ; and the 

 result of this keenness is that in many rivers where they 

 formerly abounded they are become extinct, while in 

 others they struggle up few and far between, and hold 

 but a doubtful existence at the best. 



If it were possible to say how many fish are sufficient to 

 stock a river well, and to let so many run up to fulfil that 

 office ; nay, if it were possible to deal with and count our 

 shoals of salmon, as a farmer does his flocks of sheep and 

 his oxen, we might reduce this point to a matter of cal- 

 culation and figures, and become extremely practical and 

 arithmetical over it. But it is not possible, and therefore 

 the best and only way is to give the fish a reasonable and 

 fair — indeed, a favourable chance rather than the reverse 

 — of getting up to the head-streams without let or 

 hindrance in gqpd time. But do we do so 1 Nay, we 

 rather wage a war of utter extermination against the sal- 

 mon. Any one who has seen the ingenious variety and 

 the multitude of engines set up on our coasts, estuaries, 

 and rivers to bar the progress of and capture our salmon, 

 will be filled with wonder that a single salmon ever 

 escapes them. 



To commence with the rivers. In every favourable pool 

 and stream we have draught-nets of immense capacity, 



