PREFACE. xi 



enough to reach the rivers, fall a prey to the net, 

 rod, or poacher's spear ; so that, by the time for 

 the operations of spawning, the ranks are awfully 

 thinned, and the numbers of breeding fish are but 

 few. 



And even during the spawning time their de- 

 struction does not cease ; for then the torch and 

 spear make sad havoc. I have inserted in the 

 Appendix some remarks from Mr. Tod Studdart 

 on that head, and may mention that he is a gentle- 

 man who has paid the greatest attention to the 

 habits of salmon, and has often remonstrated 

 against the bad laws and the wholesale destruction 

 of the breeding fish. I have seen too much of 

 that conduct, both with the sanction of the law 

 and without it, to doubt one word in that state- 

 ment ; I would much rather be inclined to say 

 that the one half of the depredations and destruc- 

 tion has not been told. However, there has been 

 exposed such a statement of facts, showing the 

 neglected state of salmon fisheries, that I hope it 

 will awaken the Legislature to a sense of the 

 necessity for an immediate alteration of laws so 

 hurtful to the prosperity and production of such 

 a material part of the food of the country. 



