18 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SALMON. 



mon, much more valuable than hares, pheasants, 

 or partridges, is not allowed one moment's rest, 

 not even for procreation. The cruelty of such 

 conduct is only equalled by its impolicy. 



It is thus that the salmon fisheries, as far as they 

 concern the public, are completely useless — so 

 much so, that there is one universal outcry against 

 the owners of fisheries throughout the country. It 

 is, indeed, to them and to the poachers, that the pre- 

 sent scarcity of salmon is to be attributed. Every 

 other animal in the known world, requires, and ob- 

 tains, rest and retirement during gestation, and at 

 the time of bringing forth, and is allowed opportu- 

 nity for the escape and growth of its young ; but 

 this harmless and invaluable creature, though warned 

 by unerring instinct where to go, is first obstructed 

 when its body from a state of pregnancy is ill able to 

 combat obstruction, and delayed when delay is but 

 another w r ord for death ; then hunted down like a 

 wild beast, worried from place to place, unceasingly 

 persecuted, and ultimately impaled alive on an iron 

 spear, generally in the very act of spawning. Not 

 even the shades of night, when most other animals 

 seek and find respite from their persecutors, are to 

 him any protection ; watched and traced to his 

 haunts by day, allured to certain places at night by 

 means of fires, he falls an easy victim to his more 

 cunning and unfeeling destroyer, at a moment when 

 he expects no mischief, and when he should meet 

 with no molestation. Should he miraculously save 

 himself from such impalement, what then awaits 



15 



