RAPID PASSAGE OF SALMON. 29 



travel, get extremely fat, and can bear the want of food for 

 many days till their flight is accomplished, so is it with 

 fish which migrate ; and this fact will account for salmon 

 being finer in flesh when taken off the mouth of a river, 

 and better flavoured in brackish than in fresh water. 

 Again, Thames salmon have a very short distance to travel 

 to get out of bad water into good, and leave the shipping 

 and bugbear steam-boats behind them. We will take 

 Woolwich Reach, always brackish water, and get up to 

 Hammersmith, a distance of twenty miles, which salmon 

 in good health and full vigour would traverse in less than 

 three-quarters of an hour. 



1 will now recall the attention of my readers to the plan 

 which I propose for increasing the food of man, by restor- 

 ing the stock in rivers. To second the artificial spawning 

 principle, I propose that no pots or traps shall be permit- 

 ted in the salt or brack water, so that salmon in their mi- 

 grations may descend their native streams unmolested; 

 and that where weirs are positively required, they should 

 be made upon the principle previously described, so as to 

 be easily surmounted. 



Artificial spawning for salmon is extremely simple : all 

 that is required is, to obtain as many female fish, or spawn- 

 ers, as are deemed sufficient to produce spawn enough to 

 restock the river. One male, or milter, is able to impart 

 the germinating principle to the eggs of a dozen full-grown 



