THE EMPEROR LEADS IN PERSON. 



407 



CHAPTER VI. 



SALMON-PASSES, LADDERS, ETC. 



CAVING studied ancient aquaculture 

 and fish-culture, and examined the 

 modus operandi for water-farming, 

 with its profits a thousand - fold 

 greater than those from cultivating 

 the soil, the reader will have ar- 

 rived at the threshold of an im- 

 provement as necessary as are all 

 the previously-named operations. 



One of the most important ques- 

 tions of the day in reference to the 

 fresh-water fisheries of the United 

 States especially to those devoted 

 to the propagation of salmon and 

 trout is how to expand and devel- 

 op them to the greatest extent, so 

 as to interfere as little as possible 

 with existing arrangements as to 

 mills and proprietary rights. That 

 the salmon should breed, it is ab- 

 solutely indispensable that it should be able to reach the 

 heights and shallow portions of rivers, which alone afford 

 suitable gravel-beds for the operation of depositing the ova 

 and rearing the young. If it can not get to these, the breed 

 of salmon is soon extinguished, and this has been the cause 

 of its extinction in ninety-nine rivers out of every hundred. 

 Mill-dams, those terrible enemies to the salmon, are the prin- 

 cipal offenders in this respect. Commercial and manufactur- 

 ing interests being almost too strong for the salmon, the 



