OUR INLAND FISHERIES. 17 



pound ; and therefore the over-abundance in these 

 particular districts, and the scarcity which exists 

 there at all times now, is no fair criterion of the 

 actual decrease of production. But while allowing all 

 due weight to so reasonable a view of the case, we 

 are fortunately enabled to set the point at rest by 

 the irrefragable testimony of statistics. Statistics of 

 the produce of various rivers have been kept for a 

 long series of years, and we constantly find that some 

 rivers have fallen to less than a half of their former 

 productiveness ; in others salmon have been almost 

 or quite extinguished ; and others, again, have suffered 

 in various degrees. The great cause of this decrease 

 is in every instance (save where mines and factories 

 have utterly poisoned the rivers) the same, viz. that 

 the stock is too reduced, a sufficient amount of breed- 

 ing fish not being allowed to deposit their spawn 

 in the rivers to keep up the stock 



Now, the general reader may understand the case 

 if we put it thus : Let us suppose a farmer to have 

 a farm capable of supporting a thousand sheep. Let 

 us further suppose him to be so supremely foolish as 

 to yearly kill all his sheep indiscriminately down to 

 some fifty, not excepting even those which are about 

 to drop lambs, nor those lambs which are just born. 

 It is abundantly clear that his fifty sheep will not 



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