Notes on the Breeding of Fishes, read at a Meeting of the Cotteswold 
Club, April 1, 1884. By Francis Day, F.L.S., and F.Z.S. 
Among the varied subjects pertaining to fisheries and how 
to lessen the cost of fish to the poorer consumer, by means of 
increasing the supply, there is none more worthy of a careful 
consideration than their breeding, and what is favourable to 
such being successfully carried out. For many causes, some 
preventible and others apparently insurmountable, combine to 
press hard upon fishes, more especially on such as have to 
ascend rivers from the sea in order to attain to a suitable spot 
where they may deposit their eggs, and so continue their 
race. 
Laws, it is true, have been enacted ostensibly to protect 
them when breeding, which laws themselves have in many in- . 
stances become perverted into means for their destruction. 
Officials have been appointed to see these enactments properly 
carried out; but some, alas! of these appointments have 
merged into what might almost be termed sinecures, and no 
official in the United Kingdom takes an active part in the 
breeding of the finny tribes. A few of our rivers have been re- 
stocked, due to private enterprise, but not from the public 
purse, and after this has been accomplished, private riparian 
proprietors have at once sprung into existence, and producing 
some ancient grant, they have claimed a fishery in a river 
they have not contributed to replenish. After they have 
proved their so-called rights, they have rack-rented their 
fisheries to the highest bidder, while the lessee’s only view is 
to obtain all he is able at the least cost to himself, regardless 
of seasons or the conditions of fish life. Next comes a protest 
that the regulations are pressing severely on the hard-working 
