OUR FISHES AND THEIR ENEMIES—AMBROSE 397 
gaspereaux,. not only useful to man as a food-fish, but what is 
more important, one of the favorite bait fishes by which cod and 
other line-fish, so-called, were in other days drawn within the 
bays, estuaries and river mouths, and within reach of poor men, 
fishing near home with hand-lines. By means of the in-shore 
fishing many poor men in our country were enabled to obtain a 
livelihood in by-gone days, whereas this class of men in the pre- 
sent day, for want of means to prosecute the deep-sea fishery, are 
driven to seek employment in foreign vessels, poaching along our 
coasts, or find themselves compelled to forsake fishing altogether, 
and betake themselves to other and less congenial pursuits in 
other places. Even in my day, I have seen villages along our 
shores prosperous and growing, which are now half-deserted, 
whilst I have since met many of their former inhabitants, skill- 
ful and hardy fishermen, toiling at far less congenial employment 
in the neighbouring Republic and elsewhere. 
“Princes and Kings may flourish and may fall, 
A breath can make them as a breath hath made; 
But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride, 
If once destroy’d can never be supplied.” 
The “ exodus,” of which some people in the Maritime Provinces 
complain, is clearly traceable in many instances to causes which 
a patriotic and unselfish foresight and wise legislation might in 
a large measure prevent. There is no better country for a poor 
man than that provided with abundant natural resources and a 
healthy climate, if these resources are properly developed and 
husbanded by those who take the trouble to understand and ap- 
preciate them, and work together towards the common benefit. 
It may be said that our deserted fishing villages, being for the 
most part rocky and barren, were not worth preserving, but this 
cannot be said of the thriving villages on the shores of Digby 
_ Basin. But here a most valuable fishery is being very rapidly 
destroyed, and the delicate and delicious smoked herring, known 
all over the world as “ Digby Chickens,” will soon be a thing of 
the past. The mode of capture is by closely-woven brush weirs, 
not like net-weirs, permitting the immature fish to escape, but 
indiscriminately slaughtering all,—some to be smoked and salted, 
