396 OUR FISHES AND THEIR ENEMIES—AMBROSE, 
our line-fishery along shore is now nothing to be compared with 
what it was before the commencement of trawl, or more properly, 
bultow fishing. “Trawls” or bultow lines were first introduced 
in 1874 off the shore of Digby County. As an example of the 
previous abundance of halibut along those shores, Capt. James 
Cousins, of Digby, states that in 1873, with six ‘hands’ in a small 
boat he caught, abreast of Gulliver’s Hole*, in one slack of tide, 
with hand lines, 14 halibut. Now, he says, it would require 
four trawls, 7. e., bultow-lines with 2,400 hooks in all, to make 
an equal capture in the same time. The universal opinion of our 
fishermen is that bultow-lines destroy the inshore catch of all 
line fish to a very great extent. One cause assigned for this is 
that those set lines destroy too large a proportion of the gravid 
fish ; another that they attract from their former inshore haunts 
all such fish to the distant banks at sea, where bultows abound, 
(and where so many fishermen attending them in their dories 
are, in foggy weather, lost or run down). Another means of 
destruction to line fishing is the offal of fish taken off the trawls 
and then thrown overboard, or eaten with the fish hangings from 
the set hooks. The “sound-bone ” 7. ¢. part of the vertebrae with 
the ribs attached, is swallowed by codfish, resulting in prolonged 
emaciation or death. 
But a greater evil by far, as being infinitely more expensive 
and injurious to our shore fishing, arises from interference with 
the bait supply, formerly plentiful within our headlands and at 
the mouths of our rivers. Saw-mills and other mills in posses- 
sion of the greedy and unscrupulous, have not only robbed 
posterity of their due share of the forest-trees, but by impassible 
dams, and vast accumulations of rotting sawdust and other 
decaying debris, have done and are now doing immense damage. 
Salmon, thus prevented from reaching their ancient spawning- 
grounds, or even if they could reach them from depositing their 
spawn amidst the gases of decomposing mill refuse, have been 
utterly expelled from streams formerly teeming with those delici- 
ous and gamesome fish. Nor is this all, for greater evil remains 
behind. Those dams have at the same time shut out alewives or 
