Breeding Salmon and Trout. 61 



go to decay. If the authorities would only take a lesson from the 

 Americans in the matter of the cultivation of fish and the piotec- 

 tiou of fisheries, there would be good hope that we might see our 

 net fishers and anglers rejoicing in such takes as were not un- 

 common sixty or seventy years ago. In those days there were 

 plenty of streams in all our land where salmon and trout could 

 find clear water rippling over gravelly beds, well-suited to all 

 their requirements. There they could rest after their long and 

 toilsome journey from the far-off sea, and there, in (juietness and 

 peace, they could deposit their eggs and leave them in confidence 

 and hope. But now great numbers of those lovely spawning beds 

 are silted up with coal dust, or foul with refuse from manufac- 

 tories, or poisoned with less manifest but quite as deadly chemical 

 liquids. There were no railways up our lonely glens amongst the 

 hills in those days. There were no gangs of poachers from far-off 

 towns who could take the train in the evening, get out at some 

 lonely station forty or fifty miles away, harry long stretches of 

 water through the niglit, and return with their spoils by the early 

 morning train. If a like amount of grass land and moor had been 

 rendered unproductive, and bands of men had come by train to 

 drive off sheep and cattle by night, what would have been the 

 state of our flocks and herds now ? Therefore something- must be 

 done, and that soon, or our fisheries will decline almost to extinc- 

 tion. County Councils and members of Parliament are no doubt 

 useful, and a few of them do make a noble fight on behalf of the 

 poor salmon. They are but a few folk crjang in the wilderness. 

 The many are quite apathetic. A great deal may be done in the 

 way of purifying our streams, but perhaps more will have to be 

 done by artificial rearing if our fisheries are to be restored and 

 kept up to a high standard. If I were a salmon I really think I 

 should try if it were possible to live a jolly bachelor life in the 

 sea, without care, and with plenty to eat. If marriage is a failure, 

 it must be a terrible failure to many a love-sick salmon. Let me 

 say a few words first on natural breeding of salmon and trout, and 

 secondly on the artificial rearing of them. And what I say of 

 salmon holds good of trout, except that the one goes back to the 

 sea after depositing its eggs, and the other does not. Sixty or 

 seventy years ago there was vety little accurate knowledge of the 

 ways of .salmon on the spawning beds. The difficulties of observa- 

 tion were many and great. It was hard to get a clear view of 



