138 SALMON BEITISH AND COLONIAL. 



end to such disgusting barbarity. If consumers only 

 saw a few specimens of unseasonable salmon struck by 

 the spear, they would remember the loathsome sight, 

 and take especial care to eschew a kind of food so un- 

 wholesome. Proprietors of salmon rivers are interest- 

 ed in putting down this cruelly destructive mode of 

 fishing, for a reason with which Colonel Alexander's 

 book first made us acquainted. There are few things, 

 it appears, about which fishermen ought to be more 

 careful than allowing their servants to clean the fish 

 they have killed in the stream, or to throw their offal 

 into it ; for it is a well-known fact that the slightest 

 tinge of blood, or the smallest portion of intestine, will 

 alarm a whole shoal of salmon, and send them back in 

 terror to the sea. The servants of the Hudson's Bay 

 Company are well aware of this ; and at all their fish- 

 ing-stations, the place at which they clean the fish is 

 at some distance from the river, and they invariably dig 

 a hole in which they scrupulously deposit all the offal. 

 We have a similar fact recorded in reference to the cod. 

 When the fishing-grounds are fouled by garbage the 

 fish invariably desert them. 



We readily believe that salmon may be thus driven 

 in disgust from rivers polluted with the fetid remains of 

 their own species, just as we should shrink from dwelling 

 or eating close to relics of human mortality; and we see 

 no reason why the feelings of fish should not be re- 

 spected by those desirous that they shall multiply 

 abundantly in our rivers. And as salmon in the Tay 

 may be presumed to be actuated by the same dislikes 

 evinced by those within the territories of the Hudson's 

 Bay Company, we think such persons should pray for 

 an addition to that part of the Lord Advocate's bill 

 which makes it penal to introduce into any river hot 

 limes, refuse of gas-works or products thereof, prussiate 

 of potash, or water in which green flax has been steeped, 

 or sawdust, or refuse from a mill or manufactory or 



