246 BY HOOK AND BY CROOK. 



Rather more than twenty years ago a combination 

 of circumstances had so fostered the germ of this 

 disease that it had made sufficient progress to attract 

 serious attention;, and from then until the present date 

 it has steadily and surely gained ground, so that during 

 the first three months of this year near upon 2000 

 salmon have been removed and buried by watchers and 

 keepers on the Sol way rivers alone, while many 

 thousands affected in a less degree have found their 

 way into the market to be consumed by the public, and 

 many others have died in the rivers, where they either 

 now remain or have been washed away. 



The disease attacks clean fish and kelt alike, being 

 often contracted by the former when barely out of the 

 tide-way. Within a day or two after a flood, while the 

 water is yet thick, the presence of disease can be clearly 

 detected upon fresh-run fish as they leap above the 

 surface ; a week later the majority become affected, and 

 within two weeks after a flood there is scarcely a fish 

 free from it. Fresh-run fish when first affected fre- 

 quent the swift-running streams as usual, then, as they 

 sicken, may be seen jumping and sliding, as it were, 

 upon the surface as if to allay irritation by friction, 

 flying about like mad things — in fact the uninitiated 

 observer might imagine that the movements of one 

 were those of several, so ubiquitous are the move- 

 ments of the diseased fish. 



Day by day the fungus extends over their bodies 

 and they quit the streams for slacker water, until in 



