920 THE INHABITANTS OF THE SEA. 
the growth of the young fish step by step until it ultimately 
changed into the kingly salmon. 
This ignorance of the true nature of the parr had most disas- 
crous effects, as it largely contributed to the depopulation of our 
streams, for the farmers and cottars who resided near the rivers 
used not unfrequently, after filling the frying-pan with parr, to 
feed their pigs with them, and myriads were annually killed by 
juvenile anglers. This truly deplorable havoc has fortunately 
been arrested by Act of Parliament, but the killing of grilse is 
still, I believe, a fertile source of destruction,* and should 
undoubtedly be restrained by law, as the wholesale slaughter of 
these juvenile fishes is a most lamentable example of impro- 
vident waste. 
In former times our rivers abounded with salmon, more than 
200,000 having been caught in a single summer in the Tweed 
alone, and 2,500 at one haul in the river Thurso; but, besides 
the causes above mentioned, over fishing or fishing at an im- 
proper season, and probably in many cases the pollution of the 
streams with deleterious matter from mines or manufactories, 
have considerably reduced their numbers. Fortunately, public 
attention has at length been thoroughly aroused to the danger 
which menaces our king of fishes ; and, what with better laws for 
his protection and the successful attempts that have latterly 
been made in artificial fish-breeding, we may hope that more 
prosperous times are in store for our salmon-fisheries. 
The salmon not only frequents the streams of Northern 
Europe but ascends in vast multitudes the giant rivers of 
Siberia and of North America. It 
is fished by the Ostjak and the 
Tunguse, and speared by the Indian 
of the New World. Ross’s Arctic 
Salmo Rossu salmon, which is of a more slender 
form than the common salmon, 
differently marked and coloured, and with a remarkably long 
under jaw, is so extremely abundant in the sea near the 
mouths of the rivers of Boothia Felix that 3,378 were obtained 
at one haul of a small-sized seine. The rivers of Kamtschatka 
abound in salmon of various kinds, so that the stream, 
* In 1862, 8,467 salmon and 25,042 grilse were captured in the Tweed. 
