CHAPTER IX. 



ARTIFICIAL PROPAGATION. 



In the whole wide range of subjects that more or less directly 

 concern the angler there is perhaps no more controversial matter than 

 the artificial propagation of salmon. The bare mention of it seems to 

 affect some people much as a red rag is popularly supposed to affect a 

 healthy bull. Yet I have encountered very few anglers who have had 

 any actual experience of the operations involved in hatchery work. 



A good deal of prejudice has, I think, been created by the use in 

 this connection of the term " artificial," which is in some respects 

 misleading. There is no doubt something of artifice in the process of 

 stripping the fish, but there is nothing of artificiality; for, from the 

 collection and fertilisation of the ova to the distribution of the resultant 

 fry, the operator merely assists and does not in any sense run counter 

 to nature. There is no reason why the fish handled should suffer in 

 the least from such handling, and I say so after having had specially 

 favourable and repeated opportunities of seeing fish stripped of their 

 milt and ova. If further proof were needed I might point to the large 

 proportion of marked fish which, marked as they are when being 

 stripped of eggs and milt, return to spawn in subsequent seasons. On 

 purely physical grounds, then, I can see no more objection to artificial 

 propagation in the case of salmon and sea-trout than in the case of trout. 



It is in regard to questions of expediency, however, that there is in 

 my opinion room for controversy, and, briefly, I would state my views 

 thus. 



In the event of the stock of any of our greater salmon rivers 



becoming depleted from the effects of pollution, over-netting, poaching, 



or some other known cause or causes, I would not, where the spawning 



179 



