

NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL PROPAGATION. 231 



now, but will be recognized and appreciated in years to come. 

 It stands in the same relation to mankind as the early 

 attempts to domesticate and breed cattle and sheep; and 

 just as, at the present day, no branch of industry is deemed 

 more praiseworthy than the improving the breed of our 

 domestic animals and aiding their increase, so eventually will 

 be the preserving and propagating of game animals, birds, 

 and fish. If we would live, we must produce the food that 

 nourishes and sustains life. 



Our own country, though comparatively new, and origi- 

 nally teeming with fish, has already suffered so much from 

 reckless and indiscriminate slaughter, that measures, equally 

 stringent with those of Europe, have become necessary to 

 prevent their total extinction here. We have seen how 

 nearly the noble salmon came to annihilation in all the 

 rivers of our Eastern and Middle States. We have heard the 

 oft-told story of his early history. We know that there are 

 men now living who dipped salmon with nets below the 

 Saranac dam at Plattsburg; we know that they were abun- 

 dant in the Hudson, and that the Connecticut teemed with 

 them ; that nearly every river in Maine yielded rich annual 

 tribute to the fishermen ; that the Merrimac was a famous 

 river ; that they ascended all the rivers that empty into Lake 

 Ontario and the St. Lawrence; and that they were even 

 taken in the Delaware. We have read of their wanton 

 slaughter, in season and out of season, and noted the rapid 

 process of their exclusion from these rivers, one after another, 

 by the construction of dams that barred their ascent to their 

 spawning grounds. And the beautiful trout they, too, dis- 

 appeared. Once they inhabited every brook and stream; 

 but tan-bark, saw-dust, and pot-hunters utterly wiped them 

 out from most of their old haunts. Had it not been for the 

 establishment of the Fish Commissions and their timely 

 interpositions some six years ago, nothing would have long 

 remained of these delicious fish but the record of their former 

 abundance. Even at the inception of the great work of 



