THE SALMON 51 



and importance Salmon far outweigh all our other 

 fish interests put together. But the constant flow 

 of law cases arising out of disputes and claims and 

 law-breaking in the Salmon fisheries is a real public 

 scandal, and unsatisfactory to everybody except the 

 lawyers. The late Frank Buckland would have 

 found a very large number of people here to agree 

 with him if, in his famous statement that ' more lies 

 have been told about the Pike than about any other 

 fish in the world,' he had substituted ' Salmon ' for 

 * Pike ' ! " The lawyers still continue to reap their 

 harvest, and these remarks are as pertinent to-day 

 as they were nineteen years ago. 



On many rivers the stock of Salmon has been 

 kept up by the construction of ladders or passes 

 enabling the fish to get by insurmountable falls or 

 rapids, and thus gain new breeding-grounds ; also, 

 artificial propagation is now generally resorted to, 

 the ripe fish being captured, stripped, as the operation 

 of pressing out the eggs or milt is called, and then 

 released ; the fry are reared in the hatcheries, and 

 are thus protected at a period of their lives when they 

 are least able to take care of themselves. But when 

 the enormous number of smolts which fall victims 

 to piscivorous birds and fishes is considered, it may 

 be questioned whether the comparatively few turned 

 out by a hatchery produce much effect on the stock 

 of breeding fish. It seems that a Salmon river can 

 best be improved by the prevention of contamination 

 of the water, by the constructive methods already 

 referred to, and by the strict enforcement of legis- 

 lation restricting the netsmen sufficiently to give a 

 fair proportion of the Salmon a reasonable chance 

 of reaching the breeding-grounds. The careful 



