478 DESTRUCTION OF YOUNG FISH. [CHAP. xi. 



between the upper and lower proprietors of salmon rivers, the 

 use of stake and bag nets, poaching during close-times, and 

 the consequent capture of thousands of gravid fish, as well as 

 the immense amount of overfishing by the lessees of fishing 

 stations, are doubtless among the chief reasons. 



If these misfortunes occur with an important and indi- 

 vidually valuable fish like the salmon, which is so well 

 hedged round by protective laws, and which is so accessible 

 that we can watch it day by day in our rivers and that such 

 misfortunes have occurred is quite patent to the world, indeed 

 some of the best streams of England, at one time noted for 

 their salmon, are at this moment nearly destitute of fish how 

 much more is it likely, then, that similar misfortunes may occur 

 to the unwatched and unprotected fishes of the sea, which spawn 

 in a greater world of water, with thousands of chances against 

 their seed being even so much as fructified, let alone any hope 

 of its ever being developed into fish fit for table purposes? In 

 the sea the larger fish are constantly preying on the smaller, 

 and the waste of life, as I have elsewhere explained, is enor- 

 mous : the young fish, so soon as they emerge from their fragile 

 shell, are devoured in countless millions, not one in a thousand 

 perhaps escaping the dangers of its youth. Shoals of haddocks, 

 for instance, find their way to the deposits of herring-spawn 

 just as the eggs are bursting into life, or immediately after 

 they have vivified, so that hundreds of thousands of these 

 infantile fry and quickening ova are anually devoured. The 

 hungry codfish are eternally devouring the young of other 

 kinds, and their own young as well ; and all throughout the 

 depths of ocean the strong fishes are found to be preying on 

 the weak, and a perpetual war is being waged for daily food. 

 Eeliable information, it is true, cannot easily be obtained on 

 these points, it being so difficult to observe the habits of 

 animals in the depths of the ocean; and none of our naturalists 

 can inform us how long it is before our white fish arrive at 



