62 THE DESTRUCTION OF 



while the eight other fish varied from 476 to 599 ova 

 per pound. 



In 1852, Mr. Buist and 1, from the best informa- 

 tion we then possessed, arrived at the conclusion that 

 not one e^g out of 1,000 ever became a marketable 

 fish. In 1861, Mr. Ffennell and I arrived at the opinion 

 that not one 3,000 ever became a marketable fish. 



But very few salmon have been caught and iden- 

 tified as the produce of the Stormontfield ponds in 

 ten years, yet a great benefit has been conferred on 

 the public ; inasmuch as there is no doubt that the 

 ova have been hatched more safely, and the offspring 

 better protected for fifteen months than would have 

 been the case in the river ; and an amount of infor- 

 mation as to the natural history and habits of salmon 

 has been obtained, of which an account has been pub- 

 lished, 1862, by Mr. W. Brown, of Perth. After a 

 brief sojourn of fifteen months the young fish go to 

 the sea, where their enemies are as numerous and 

 more voracious than even those in the river, as Mr. 

 Ffennell once saw twenty-six salmon fry taken from 

 a black pollock ; thus a sea fish worth sixpence in the 

 market would, at this rate, consume in three months, 

 at twenty-six per day, upwards of 2,000 young sal- 

 mon, which, if they could have returned to the river, 

 and been caught, would have been worth 500.* 



Man is another great enemy, not so much from the 

 number he destroys, as from his intercepting the as- 

 cent of the fish to its breeding-grounds, thereby an- 



* The enemies of the salmon are, according to Mr. Frank Buck- 

 land's list, as follows : To the eggs floods, droughts, frost, mud 

 brought down by the stream, trout, water shrimp, and beetles. To 

 the young fish trout, other fish, larvae of dragon-fly, water beetles, 

 especially dytiscus, ducks and many other water birds, and rats. To the 

 adult fish porpoises, cormorants, hakes, black pollack, seals, fishing 

 frog, Lophiuspiscatorius, or otter. The greatest enemy of all is man, 

 'viz., poachers, who kill the parent fish at spawning time, and by 

 erectiug weirs across the streams, and thereby while preventing them 

 getting to their spawning ground, destroy their power of reproduction. 



