104 THE SALMON. 



and a half during the same period in which the adult 

 salmon had declined a half or two-thirds, so that, to a 

 great extent, a compensation had been found for the 

 decay of the more valuable fish. But in the next five 

 years the Grilse produce fell a third, to 56,000 ; in the 

 next and last five years it fell two-thirds, to 23,000 ; 

 and in the season of 1855 it had reached 13,000, or less 

 than a sixth of the average of ten years before. In 

 1856, it will be observed, the number again rose to 

 about a half of what it had been eight or ten years 

 before ; but that symptom of improvement, small and 

 exceptional at the best, is more than counterbalanced by 

 the continued falling off in adult salmon, showing that of 

 the total number of the species killed in the Tweed in 

 that year (the last year of which the statistics have been 

 obtained), nearly six-sevenths were fish that had never 

 bred. 



It is curious to find the late Mr. James Wilson, in speak- 

 ing on these most significant facts, say (Encyclopedia Bri- 

 tannica, ix. 608), "There are now as many fish bred as 

 ever; but that they are killed at an earlier age is evident 

 from the great extent to which the slaughter of grilse 

 now exceeds that of salmon." We should say that when 

 the proportion slaughtered of fish that had never bred 

 at all had been greatly increased, and when the number 

 of fish that had bred had diminished by three-fourths, 

 when the proportional mortality had enormously in- 

 creased among single people, and when there was only 

 one married person where there used to be five, it was 

 exceedingly difficult to understand how there could be 

 as many fish bred as ever, or how we were to avoid the 



