274 SALMON FISHING 



have fared otherwise. The waters are very unstable 

 in volume. They rise to levels much higher, and 

 fall to levels much lower, than they ever reached 

 in the days when rain over the watersheds had to 

 find its own way towards them. In the old times 

 each storm of rain, the water filtering slowly, kept 

 the rivers in fair flow until the next ; nowadays, 

 through the artificial courses, the water is carried off 

 almost as quickly as it falls, and there is no reserve 

 for the periods of fair weather. 



On the salmon rivers, as on the trout streams, 

 the results have been rather serious. The com- 

 mercial fisheries have not suffered much, if at all ; 

 but that is probably because most of these are in the 

 estuaries, which, at least when the tide is not at 

 full ebb, are kept in normal volume by the sea. 

 Sportsmen are not so well off as the professional 

 fishers. They may become tenants of well-reputed 

 stretches for a month or two months, or even three, 

 either in spring or in autumn ; but they cannot be 

 sure that salmon will be in the waters, or that if 

 the fish are there the waters will be of the proper, 

 which is the natural, height. Even in the British 

 Islands, the meteorological influences over which are 

 peculiarly complex, weather has a certain periodicity, 

 and we have phrases, such as " the Lammas Flood," 

 which indicate that rain-storms at stated times are 

 as much to be expected as frosts at others ; but 

 the periodicity is subject to frequent exceptions. In 

 1904, for example, saving over a part of Argyllshire, 

 Scotland had no considerable rain after the beginning 



