109 



the whole salmon tribe is to be preferred, unless laws, founded 

 on impartiality, and carried out in a conciliatory spirit, prevent 

 the breach of that charity which is the second commandment 

 to man. 



In conclusion, it must be repeated that the great and solid 

 foundation for Improvement of the Inland Fisheries will certainly 

 be found in the removal or over-coming of obstructions to the 

 free migration of the Salmon. She suffers no surmountable 

 obstacles to interrupt her persevering progress. While these 

 remain they present physical barriers to the fish, and moral and 

 practical ones to co-operation between parties, whose mutual in- 

 terests require unanimity in the endeavour to cultivate and 

 protect these fisheries. All other means which may be applied 

 will fall short in the production of valuable results. 



NOTE. 



SIBERIAN SALMON FISHERIES. " It is Russian civilization which has 

 reduced to misery the fish-eating tribes of the Irtuish and Obi, (two 

 great rivers of the Siberian Continent,) and this without the inten- 

 tion of so doing, arid in a way not liable to censure : for, to most 

 people, it will seem an advantage that the fish of these rivers should 

 be taken at particular places, in larger quantities at a time, in a manner 

 open to the inquiries of the statist, and that single families should be 

 able to make large fortunes by the fisheries, while enough still remains 

 to the original inhabitants to enable them to live with little care. But 

 it must undoubtedly be here expected, as a consequence of European 

 industry, that the remarkable migrations of the fish up the fresh waters, 

 will hereafter be known only from traditions of the past; for all over 

 the earth, from the equator to beyond the polar circle, there is hardly 

 the mouth of a river, which was not at some early period frequented 

 by those inhabitants of the sea, as regularly as they now visit all the 

 rivers of Siberia, Kamschatka, and of the American coasts, occupied by 

 the indigenous tribes : and the migration in question is, assuredly, one 

 of the phenomena which man has it in his power to eradicate com- 

 pletely from the face of the earth. Should such results be approach- 

 ing here, yet it is not likely that they will have what can be called a 

 decisive effect on the human race, for the Ostyaks must all perish before 

 that critical period arrives, but the Russians surviving them will betake 

 themselves to new branches of industry when the fisheries once fail." 

 Ermaris Travels in Siberia, London, 1848, vol. ii. p. 93. 



M. Erman states that Russian traders annually fit out great fishing 

 expeditions, and settle themselves in the neighbourhood of the most 

 productive sand-banks, which they purchase or hire of the Ostyak 

 inhabitants. The nets used are 800 feet long. The salmon are salted 

 and packed in tubs, which contain from 800 to 2,500 each. Some of 

 these Russian fishing companies have recently realized profit to the 

 amount of 150,000 rubles (or about 25,000) in one summer; "but," 

 adds M. Erman, " it is at the same time equally certain, that the fish- 

 eries of the Ostyaks round about were thereby seriously damaged." 



