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salmon fisheries, but that everyone should be permitted to fish 
as he pleases, while the fish ought to continue their species in 
the sea, and their young to ascend rivers to be captured. 
If we turn to the works of RonpELetius and GrsneR, who 
wrote upon the salmon upwards of three and a quarter cen- 
turies ago, we find they were upholders of the doctrine that 
these fish deposited their ova in the sea, WiLLUGHByY, in 1686, 
disputing this; but without giving a history of this controversy, 
we may well restrict our attention to facts. At the late 
Fisheries Exhibition, the Commissioner from Canada, Mr 
Wiumort, informed us that salmon can be detained in salt 
water until ready to be stripped of their ova and milt, which 
can then be raised in fresh water. But several experiments 
have all ended in one result, the eggs having died in salt water, 
as have also all the young; consequently, if salmon from any 
cause are prevented ascending rivers and have to drop their 
eggs in saline or brackish water, no young will be hatched, 
while young placed in brackish or salt water will die. 
I remarked, in 1882, that at Sir James Gipson Marrianpn’s 
fishponds at Howietoun the Loch Leven variety of trout pro- 
duced eggs of different sizes in accordance with the parent’s 
age. Thus fish hatched in 1876, or six-year-olds, gave ova, 
thirty-two of which filled the length of a glass grill, whereas 
those females which had been hatched in 1875, or seven-year- 
olds, furnished eggs twenty-seven or twenty-eight of which 
occupied the same space. Not only does this occur in the Loch 
Leven variety, but also in the brook trout and the American 
charr. Even in the common stickleback Ranson has observed 
that not all the eggs of the same batch have exactly the same 
dimensions, and still less have those of different individual 
parents when ripe. 
The same phenomenon has been observed in the United 
States, where the fish commissioner on the M‘Cloud river in 
1878 remarked that the parent salmon were unusually small, 
their average weight being under 8lb. This small size was 
stated to be undoubtedly caused in whole or in part by the 
fishing at the cannaries of the Sacramento, where the 8in. 
Sas eA: 
