ARTIFICIAL HATCHING OF SALMON EGGS. 67 
the ordinary course of nature, the young fry are hatched. 
By dint of careful attention in increasing the quantity of 
water as the fry grow, in the supply of proper food, and in 
other matters of detail, the young fish are reared “by 
hand” until they are big enough and strong enough to 
fight the battle of life on their own account, when they 
are turned into a natural stream. 
This system is so far an improvement upon Nature that 
as many as ninety per cent.,and even more, of the eggs may 
safely reach the “fry” stage, instead of the vastly smaller 
proportion which, as we have seen, survive in the ordinary 
course of things. But here the advantage ends: the fry, 
to become salmon, must develop into “smolts,” and pass 
down the river into the sea; brought up at the hands of 
tender nurses, they have lost much of their natural timidity, 
and so soon as they are turned into an open stream they 
are likely to fall an even easier prey to their enemies than if 
they had been born in the midst of them. This objection is 
only one of degree, and would lose all its force if the salmon 
fry were able, like trout fry, to remain in a comparatively 
restricted area of water, where an unrelenting war could be 
waged on their foes, and where they could be tended as care- 
fully as a flock of lambs in a fold. But, instead of this, 
they have to go down to the sea and to face all the perils 
to which they would have been exposed had they been 
left to hatch out naturally; and the only real advan- 
tage which artificial hatching affords in such a case is 
that the number of fry reared from the eggs of a 
certain number of salmon, and started on their way 
to the sea, is many times greater than would have been 
produced by the same number of breeding fish if left 
entirely to Nature. Whether, in a river endowed with a 
fair share of natural capabilities, this is a practical 
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