SOME NOTES ON THE GAME-FISH. 33 



be enforced against any one killing them. The utility of this 

 appears to be, at least, questionable. A spawning salmon 

 or bull-trout produces some 800 ova to each pound of her 

 weight — (say 16,000 ova to a 20 lb. fish), and of this 

 enormous number, a very small — quite inappreciable — per- 

 centage is ever intended by Nature to reach maturity. From 

 the first they are designedly the food of many other creatures. 

 Trout, eels, the larvae of water insects, and even their own 

 kind devour them in thousands from their very birth. Then 

 on their development into fry, they are preyed on by other fish, 

 Herons, and diving birds all the way down to the sea. Their 

 arrival in salt water is awaited by a host of fresh enemies — 

 cod, coalsay, Cormorants, Goosanders, and divers of every 

 kind, and no one knows what else. During May and June, 

 the rock-codling, poodlers, coalsay, and lythe, appear to live 

 almost exclusively on smolts, from half-a-dozen to a dozen of 

 which are often found in a single fish, and the total numbers 

 of these marauders is legion. 



Probably, not more than perhaps four or five smolts in 

 every 10,000 was ever intended to survive all the manifold 

 risks and enemies it has to encounter, and the extra risk by 

 rod and line would probably be an inappreciable factor. The 

 foregoing remarks are suggested by seeing a blue-coated, 

 silver-buttoned public functionary zealously pursuing a few 

 bare-legged, terrified little urchins who have dared to 

 attempt the capture of a two-ounce par. 



The period when salmon do want protection is in late 

 autumn and winter, when they run up the small burns, and 

 into the shallow waters of the stream-heads to spawn. Like 

 all other wild creatures at their corresponding season, 

 salmon at that period become wholly defenceless, and, as it 

 were, throw themselves on human mercy and consideration. 

 And surely, in return for the sport they give, and for their 

 delicious flesh, they are entitled to have that consideration 

 at the time when they cannot take care of themselves. They 

 are surely entitled to be protected against the greedy 

 rapacity of the poacher, and the nocturnal fraternity of 

 the lantern and the cleek ? The period of danger is 

 comparatively short, and a dozen men employed then for 



