APPENDIX. 77 



?gg of the salmon, then the pedicle or neck of the same 

 is stopped up with alluvial deposit, which hinders the 

 necessary proportion of oxygen of the water from pene- 

 trating the embryo, and consequently suffocation ensues ; 

 the egg becomes foetid and very injurious to the water, 

 so that the stock in such water must moreover become 

 sickly. Some three years back, when a noble and generous 

 Duke gave his fisheries a jubilee, for the purpose, as was 

 thought, of restoring his salmonries for the benefit of the 

 public, by producing a larger proportion of food, I wrote 

 to him that such would be of no avail ; and such has 

 proved to be the case, upon the authority of the letter of 

 ' A. Y.' And as much of all our fisheries in the United 

 Kingdom must go back from the wild and natural state, 

 so it becomes our duty to look to the artificial production 

 of them in the same manner as breeding other animals for 

 the wants and use of man. I therefore trust, that as the 

 habits of fish are becoming equally known with the 

 habits of other animals of agrarian worth, landed pro- 

 prietors will give this subject an undivided attention ; for 

 when it is considered that one million of salmon brood will 

 produce ten million of pounds weight in two years, I ask, 

 then, what can produce a larger increase than water, when 

 properly attended to ?" 



from Bell's Life. 



" Mr. EDITOR, I see a letter from ' Mr. Boccius,' on 

 the ' Scarcity of Salmon ' last season, which so far agrees 

 with the letter of f A. Y.' in the same number, regarding 

 the effects of the floods on the spawning fish, although 

 he seems to think that the quality of the water had more 

 tendency to the evil than the quantity of it had : I would 

 therefore beg to say that Mr. B. is entirely mistaken when 

 he believes that the turgid state of the water, or alluvial 

 deposits, are injurious to the breeding of salmon. In the 

 first place, salmon select for their spawning-beds the 

 shallows, where the river, at its lowest state, runs sharply 

 over the gravel bottom, and where no alluvial substance 

 can lodge; and when the river is flooded, all such combi- 

 nations of matter are deposited in deep still pools and 



