Fishes of the Western North Atlantic 485 



Decline in Abundance. Atlantic Salmon were extremely abundant in early colo- 

 nial days from New England northward to the northern shores of the Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence and Labrador in every river that was not barred to them by impassible falls 

 and where spawning conditions were suitable. The few taken by the natives merely 

 reduced overcrowding at the spawning sites ; and the waters ran clear and clean, deeply 

 shaded by virgin forest growth down to the stream and river banks. The advances in 

 colonization and expansion, however, with concomitant increases in man's exploitation 

 of both the land's resources and the fishery, soon began to deplete the Salmon pop- 

 ulation. 



In 1849, Perley {ll2) wrote: 



The quantities of salmon in the River Restigouche and Miramichi, at the first settlement of the country 

 were perfectly prodigious; although many are yet taken annually, the supply diminishes from year to year. And 

 this is not surprising when it is considered that many of the streams formerly frequented by salmon are now 

 completely shut against them by mill dams without "fishways" — that in the branches of the large rivers, as also 

 in the smaller rivers, nets are too often placed completely across the stream, from bank to bank, which take every 

 fish that attempts to pass — that "close time" in many of the rivers is scarcely, if at all, regarded — and that, besides 

 the improper use of nets at aU seasons, fish of all sizes, are destroyed by hundreds in the very act of spavming, 

 by torchlight and spears at a time when they are quite unfit for human food.^* 



Perhaps the most destructive practice in the early days, especially in New England, 

 was the construction of dams in connection with the production of power through 

 water wheels, as typified in the Connecticut and Merrimack rivers. The Connecticut 

 River, extending 407 miles northward into northern New England, supported a large 

 run until the end of the eighteenth century. In four years, however, following the con- 

 struction of a dam 16 feet high across the river at Miller's Run in 1798, there were 

 few fish left, and in 12 years there was none (2j). The fate of this species in the Mer- 

 rimack River in northeastern Massachusetts (no miles long and extending into New 

 Hampshire) also typifies the history of Atlantic Salmon in New England rivers from 

 which they have been barred {iS). They spawned plentifully in this river's upper 

 reaches as late as 1793; in 1790, for example, 60—100 fish a day was the usual catch 

 with a 90-yard seine, near the river's mouth; but the completion in 1847 of a dam at 

 Lawrence, Massachusetts, completely barred the spawning areas of the river to them. 

 For some years thereafter those that had been produced in the upper reaches gathered 

 below the dam in spring and summer, "vainly endeavoring to ascend." There has 

 been no run in the Merrimack since 1859 or i860, when the last fish hatched above 

 the dam had lived their span of life, and there has been no spawning there except by 

 a few that may have been lifted over the dam. 



The spawning areas in only a few of the numerous rivers in New England that 

 supported Salmon runs in the early days were still open to them by the end of the past 

 century, and by 1925 only two of the Maine rivers, the Dennys and the Penobscot, 

 saw regular runs, aided in part by the artificial propagation carried on by the U.S. 

 Bureau of Fisheries. Since then, however, the situation has improved slightly in Maine. 



18. See also lo8; 92; 7. 



