XON-LEGISLATIVE KEMEDIES. 227 



man breeds, and another catches ; one man pays, and 

 another profits. If the fish bred and nursed in ponds 

 could also be reared till near their full growth, under 

 the care of man, and for the profit of those who had 

 been at the cost of breeding and caring for them, we 

 might look with certainty for a great and rapid increase 

 in the number of salmon-nurseries, and for proportionate 

 results visible in the rivers and in the markets. But 

 the peculiarity of pisciculture as applied to salmon — 

 which has not been sufficiently taken into account by 

 those who have drawn inferences from the great success 

 attending the stocking of certain French rivers with 

 non-migratory fish — is, that, as soon as you have brought 

 your brood past the perils of birth and infancy, you must 

 let them forth to the world of waters — " the world not 

 their friend, nor (sufficiently) the world's law" — without 

 the thousandth part of a chance that they will ever 

 return to reward their early benefactors. " Upon the 

 river Thurso," said Mr. W. Dunbar to the House of 

 Lords Committee, in 1860, "I have artificial ponds, and 

 have had for some years, for the purpose of increasing 

 the fish ; and then these men put in their bag-nets, and 

 catch the fish which I have reared with the greatest 

 care in the world, before they come up to me." And 

 obviously this must be the common case. The obstacle, 

 however, is at least in part removable, if it were pos- 

 sible to devise and enforce any system by which the 

 salmon-trade could be made to act with some degree 

 of concert and co-operation — as indeed it does on the 

 Tay as to this one matter of breeding-ponds — instead 

 of its members striving, as at present, which shall do 



