200 PARR-ICIDE ! [CHAP. v. 



sustained by his voracity. No sooner do the eggs ripen, and 

 the young fish come to life, than they are exposed, in their de- 

 fenceless state, to be preyed upon by all the enemies already 

 enumerated ; while as parr they have been taken out of our 

 streams in such quantities as to be made available for the 

 purposes of pig-feeding and as manure ! Some economists 

 estimate that only one egg out of every thousand ever becomes 

 a full-grown salmon. Mr. Thomas Tod Stoddart calculated 

 that one hundred and fifty millions of salmon ova are annually 

 deposited in the river Tay ; of which only fifty millions, or 

 one-third, come to life and attain the parr stage ; that twenty 

 millions of these parrs in time become sinolts, and that their 

 number is ultimately diminished to 100,000 ; of which 

 70,000 are caught, the other 30,000 being left for breeding 

 purposes. Sir Humphrey Davy calculates that if a salmon 

 produce 17,000 roe, only 800 of these will arrive at maturity. 

 It is well, therefore, that the female fish yields 1000 eggs for 

 each pound of her weight ; for a lesser degree of fecundity, 

 keeping in view the enormous waste of life indicated by 

 these figures, would long since especially taking into account 

 the various very destructive modes of fishing that used a few 

 years ago to be in use have resulted in the utter extinction 

 of this valuable fish. 



The root of the evil as regards the scarcity of salmon is to 

 be found in the avarice of the lessees of fisheries, who have 

 overfished the rivers to an alarming extent. The increased 

 value of all kinds of fish food during late years has engen- 

 dered in these parties a greed of money that leads to the 

 capture and sale of almost everything that bears the shape of 

 fish. The tenant of a salmon-fishery has but one desire, and 

 that is to clear his rent and get as much profit as he can. To 

 achieve this end he takes all the fish that come to his net, no 

 matter of what size they may be. It is not his interest to let 

 a single one escape, because if he did so his neighbour above 



