18 FISH CULTTJKE. 



keep his farm stocked, and that ruin must in time 

 ensue. Yet still he goes on slaughtering, and won- 

 dering that he has not as many sheep on his farm as 

 he had formerly. This is somewhat the case on 

 many of our best salmon rivers. 1 But to make the 

 case still more clear to those unacquainted with 

 the salmon, save through the medium of a fish- 

 monger, we must briefly trace the natural history 

 of the salmon as it is generally set forth and 

 accepted by those best acquainted with it. Salmon 

 leave the sea, and run up into the rivers, at all 

 times of the year, for the purpose, sooner or later, 

 of depositing their spawn in the shallows and fords 

 of the higher parts of the rivers. Some enter the 

 rivers in the spring, and push their way up from 

 pool to pool through the summer, until they reach 

 the upper waters, and these are of course the first 

 to spawn, and, being so early, they are infinitely 

 the most valuable fish to a river ; others, again, enter 

 the rivers in the summer; but the great rush of 

 breeding fish does not commonly take place until 

 about August or September (and sometimes they are 



1 The reasons of the decrease of salmon, and how it befalls that a 

 sufficient number of fish do not run up the rivers to spawn, will be 

 found in a practical detail of the modes of slaughter at present 

 employed against the salmon, in the Appendix. 



