416 THE ANGLES. 



a tilt at the artificial propagation of salmon. Unques- 

 tionably it is most valuable in re-stocking rivers with fish. 

 There are many hundreds of rivers from Niagara down to 

 Quebec, from which the Scdmonidee have been expelled, 

 and it would be doing a good service to the country to 

 re-stock these with fish. A gentleman of the name of 

 Wilmot has in fact re-stocked two or three tributaries of 

 Ontario, but it seems to me to be an absurdity to put up 

 a fish-hatching house on a river like Eestigouche, where 

 there are hundreds of miles of spawning beds to which 

 fish have access. An experience of many years on salmon 

 rivers has proved to me conclusively that the best and 

 indeed the only way to increase the supply of salmon is to 

 curtail the fixed engines of destruction at the mouths of 

 the rivers. In several instances I have seen these fixed 

 engines cut down to a fraction of their former dimensions 

 amid the outcry of the proprietors, who swore they would 

 be ruined. But what was the result? Why in a few 

 years afterwards their take of fish had increased in pro- 

 portion to the reduction of their nets. In the river 

 Moisie, in 1859, it required 15,000 fathoms of nets to kill 

 250 barrels of salmon. In 1873, the nets being reduced 

 to 2500 fathoms, the yield of salmon was 680 barrels. In 

 the Eestigouche one-half the fixed nets were cut down, 

 and in four years the take of salmon had doubled. Every 

 fathom cut off a fixed net is worth a thousand artificially 

 hatched fry, but then the proprietor of that said fathom 

 makes a tremendous disturbance if it is taken from him, 

 and the member for his county loses a lot of votes at 

 the next election, whereas the public consider a thousand 

 artificially hatched salmon fry cheap at the money. 



