ANGLERS THE TKTJE FRIENDS OF THE SALMON. 203 



time have its gamy qualities been questioned. In the eight- 

 eenth century its shoals became so numerous as to make it 

 necessary to guard, by a clause in indentures, against feed- 

 ing apprentices with it more than two days in each week. 

 This was the case in England and in some of its colonies. 

 But from many of our rivers, which teemed with salmon at 

 the beginning of the present century, this delicious and grace- 

 ful fish has been driven away ; and were it not that through 

 the efforts of a few angling philosophers the public has be- 

 come sufficiently enlightened to see the necessity for the em- 

 ployment of means to restock our salmon rivers, it would be 

 scarcely worth the time and ink necessary to describe the 

 salmon in its varied aspects for the table, for commerce, and 

 as an interesting feature in the recreative sports of the coun- 

 try. 



But, thanks to a few public-spirited gentlemen, whose sci- 

 entific discoveries were derived from experiments instituted 

 at their own expense, the recent reports of the Fisheries Com- 

 missioners of New England show that the waters are being 

 restocked with such zeal and alacrity that it will not be more 

 than five years before most of the rivers north of Pennsylva- 

 nia will be literally repeopled with salmon. The favorable 

 prospects thus extended, when coupled with the generosity 

 of our Northern neighbors, whereby the Dominion permits us 

 to compete equally with its own people in the leasing of Ca- 

 nadian salmon-waters, gives hopeful promise that salmon-fish- 

 ing with the fly will soon engage the attention of our anglers 

 for striped bass during June and July, and thus add an inter- 

 esting feature to the sports of the year, without trenching 

 upon the best season for striped-bass angling. 



The Highlander who stated that " no man has any right to 

 a hunter's badge who has not killed a red deer, an eagle, a 

 salmon, and a seal," had never been in America, or he would 

 have made some additions to his prerequisites. If it exhilar- 

 ates and even astonishes to take a salmon in the modest riv- 

 ers of the British Isles, with gaffers as helpers, who know 



