oe) 
the mouths of the rivers, and to destroy them when they 
were on the spawning beds: and to those two things alone 
was due the large increase which had taken place. He 
did not for a moment wish to depreciate the value of the 
efforts made by fish culturists in Canada and the United 
States, but he thought before they went very largely 
into salmon hatching in England they must do a great deal 
more to make the rivers fitter to receive the fish to be 
put into them, by removing pollutions. Means should also 
be adopted to enable the salmon to pass at their own free 
will up and beyond the dams which cut them off from the 
spawning beds. Mr. Milne Home had referred to the ques- 
tion of pollutions, and he would take that opportunity of 
congratulating him upon the result of an action which had 
been tried at the Court of Session, the result of which 
would be that one of the tributaries of the Tweed would 
be freed from its pollutions. The artificial culture of fish 
had been of enormous advantage in stocking waters with 
fish, which those waters had never contained before ; but 
he thought that by purifying the rivers, by placing ladders 
which would enable the fish to surmount the weirs, by 
protecting the fry of the fish in the upper waters, and in 
the lower waters by preventing the fishermen entirely 
blocking the mouths of the rivers by enormous nets, 
they would be able to greatly improve the salmon 
fisheries ; and then artificial culture might come in. If 
they took the pollutions out of the Thames, and put 
ladders up the weirs, they might bring back the day when 
twenty or thirty salmon used to be caught at a haul, and 
when salmon used to sport themselves opposite the home 
of the Legislature at St. Stephen’s. He hoped the Legis- 
lature would take heart of grace, and insist upon the 
pollutions being removed from the Thames and other 
[21] D 
