64 THE DESTRUCTION OF 



In the production of non-migratory river fish, as 

 trout, the artificial system may be successfully ap- 

 plied, as has been proved by Mr. Frank Buckland. 



Now, with regard to profit ; dealing commercially 

 with this important natural history question, we must 

 admit it is one of the greatest magnitude, yet at the 

 same time, with the facts I have stated before us, who 

 can say that any quantity of salmon that could be 

 artificially bred would pay the incidental expenses 

 attendant upon a fish-breeding establishment, when 

 we see apparently in the result such insignificant re- 

 turns of saleable fish ? 



The powers of reproduction are so great in salmon, 

 that in a large stock of parent fish, well protected 

 from poachers in the breeding season, would appear 

 to consist the best mode of increasing the quantity ; 

 unlike cattle, they require no houses, feeding, or care. 

 But in the breeding season they pass, as I have 

 stated, into the smallest streams, and can be killed 

 by the simplest and rudest implements ; and to pre- 

 vent this, I employ about 100 water bailiffs night and 

 day to protect them from injury, without which they 

 would be killed, and their eggs destroyed ; great at- 

 tention must therefore be paid to the system of 

 protection. 



By this means the money value of a fishery may 

 be increased. From natural causes, beyond the power 

 of man to discover, it will be seen that great irregu- 

 larity occurs in annual returns; but in order to show 

 this irregularity more fully, I submit a return of 

 Lord Grey's fishery at Kinfauns, on the River Tay, 

 near Perth, for fifty years, during which no two years 

 are similar : 



