VALUE OF THE SALMON. 5 



moved from the fisheries. If we do not now supply 

 foreign markets, it is not because there is no foreign 

 demand, but because we have not enough for our own 

 supply, even as a costly luxury. Great Britain, in truth, 

 has become more than ever the salmon-producing and 

 salmon-eating country of the world, and when the fish 

 ceases from among us, the end of all salmon is at hand. 

 True, we are told by Sir John Eoss that the production of 

 salmon in the Arctic regions is so great that in Boothia 

 Felix 100 Ibs. can be bought for a knife (knives are 

 scarce), and that they are eaten to such an extent that he 

 saw an Esquimaux dispose of a stone-weight to lunch, 

 before beginning to dine in earnest off the same dish ; 

 and we have also heard of the abundance that pre- 

 vails in Norway, and in New Brunswick and British 

 Columbia. But, 1st, almost all those places are, or at 

 least have hitherto been, for market purposes inaccess- 

 ible : 2d, the fish seem to be, in some of the most 

 abounding districts, of a coarser species than that which 

 would appear to be almost peculiar to the British rivers 

 (indeed, so marked was the difference for the worse of 

 the Arctic salmon, that Dr. Eichardson, the naturalist of 

 Sir James Eoss's expedition, considered it quite a new 

 species, and, by a somewhat equivocal compliment, named 

 it the Salmo Rossii) : and, 3d, the salmon abound in 

 those regions mainly because they have not been in the 

 habit of being caught. In Norway, fish have been becom- 

 ing rapidly more scarce since ever our own anglers taught 

 the natives the way and the advantage of killing them ; 

 and one of the latest books regarding the salmon regions 

 of North America (Hind's Labrador) shows in detail that 



