ATLANTIC SALMON 239 



Their accessibility renders their capture little more than a 

 mechanical operation, and eventually it will result in the 

 practical destruction of the salmon industry. Americans 

 seem utterly unable to conserve for perpetual benefit any 

 particularly valuable form of wild life. 



A brief comparison of the value of the Alaska salmon 

 industry fifteen years ago and now shows that in 1899 the 

 product was valued at $6,773,876, and in 1913 it amounted 

 to $14,448,234. 



The Atlantic Coast Salmon. — It is now necessary to 

 call this fish the Atlantic Salmon 1 in order to distinguish 

 it from the Pacific species; but for two centuries it held its 

 place in literature as the Salmon. It once inhabited many 

 portions of northwestern Europe, and in some it still survives. 



In North America its natural habitat was originally from 

 the mouth of the Hudson River northward throughout the 

 coastal rivers of New England, Canada, New Brunswick, 

 Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Labrador, to Greenland. 

 Once very abundant in the Connecticut River, it was driven 

 out of that stream in 1798 by the erection of a sixteen-foot 

 dam in Miller's River, 100 miles from the sea, which cut off 

 the fish from their spawning-beds. In 1872 there were 

 twenty-eight rivers in the United States which once con- 

 tained Salmon, but from twenty of them that fish had totally 

 disappeared. To-day the nearest Atlantic Salmon are found 

 in Maine and northern New Hampshire, New Brunswick and 

 Nova Scotia. 



As a game fish, Salmo salar is fit to rank with the kings 



1 Sal'mo sa'lar. 



