286 How to obtain it. 



fish that push up to the very sources of some of our rivers. Let 

 us follow them. First, they are blocked in some pool half-way up 

 stream by an obstruction that is impassable except during a 

 heavy flood. What takes place ? Why, half of them are taken 

 out by poachers, and maybe even a larger proportion. The 

 wholesale or professional poacher, call him what you will, attends 

 to his work. 



Then after a while a friendly flood comes down and helps 

 the remainder of the fish over the barrier, and they are soon 

 scattered over the head waters of the stream. The flood subsides, 

 and the water is soon in the other extremity. The rapid torrent 

 becomes a succession of clear pools with fish in them, and so 

 little water that they are unable to pass from one pool to another. 

 Another class of poacher now appears, and he is the individual 

 who would not go far out of his way to catch a salmon, but who, 

 on seeing one under a bank or in a pool, and a pitch-fork handy, 

 considers that he has as much right to the fish as anyone else, and 

 carries it home under his coat. So that some of these fish never 

 reach the spawning beds at all. But suppose a fourth of them 

 get there. They have escaped their greatest enemy, but they 

 have not forgotten him. They do things in a hurry, as I have 

 found on many occasions, and the eggs are often washed away, or 

 buried, or left dry. 



But after all some of them reach the hatching point \Vhat 

 then ? They hatch in spring, and, having absorbed their sacs, if 

 spared to live so long, they start upon a journey. I have watched 

 them coming down the streams, and have seen how in every pool 

 they have to run the gauntlet. Hungry trout waiting their prey 

 get fully half of them, the birds pick up a few ; all the way down 

 for miles they run the risk of being devoured by eels and other 

 fish, and probably very few indeed ever live to return to the river 

 as mature salmon. Eeels should be well looked after on every 

 salmon river. They are well attended to in New Zealand, I see, 

 by one of the reports lately to hand. 



There is a serious falling off in the catch of salmon on many 

 of our rivers, and when this is the case there is usually a cry made 

 for the extension of the fishing season, which, if allowed, would 

 only tend to reduce the stock of salmon still more. On the other 



