I 3 4 SALMON AND TROUT, 



money value of about i6o,ooo/. Unfortunately, however, the 

 fry actually added to the stock of the river are a mere fraction, 

 and those that survive to return as grilse a very trifling fraction 

 of these numbers. The proportion has been calculated by 

 some authorities as about one in every thousand, and by 

 others at a maximum of one in every six thousand, out of the 

 original deposit of ova. 



Great as this loss appears to be, it is not really to be won- 

 dered at when the numberless causes of destruction are borne 

 in mind. From the first laying of the egg until the plunge of 

 the young smolt into the tidal wave, and even afterwards in 

 the broader waters of the estuary or open sea, a hundred 

 wholesale depredators lie in wait for it. 



First there are the shoals of hungry fish of all kinds which 

 prowl about the fords, pressing close behind the spawner, and 

 ready to fight for the possession of her eggs almost before they 

 are laid ; l then come the voracious larvae of the may fly and 

 stone fly, the water shrimps, and a host of kindred insects, 

 which work their way in amongst the gravel and destroy, per- 

 haps less ostentatiously, but not less certainly ; whilst a winter 

 flood will often sweep down the river, and bury a whole brood 

 under a foot of sand drift. If the egg escapes these perils, 

 and, in due course, releases its charge, fresh dangers await the 

 delicate and immature fry. The trout, the heron, 2 and the 

 wild duck even the parent salmon themselves hunt it out 

 in its sheltering creeks and crevices ; and hundreds of fry are 

 daily sacrificed on a single spawning bed by this means. Lastly, 

 as if these causes of destruction were insufficient, naturalists 

 have discovered that there is in some waters a species of plant 

 by no means very uncommon, the Bladderwort ( Utricularid), 



1 When a keeper of the Thames Angling Society was employed in procuring 

 trout ova in a stream at High Wycombe, he observed a pair of trout spawning 

 on a shallow ford, and another just below them devouring the ova as fast as 

 they were deposited by the spawner. The keeper netted the thief, and in his 

 stomach were found upwards of 2 oz. of solid ova, or about 300 eggs. 



- One of these long-legged poachers was caught in flagrante delicto, at the 

 Stormontfield ponds. When shot he vomited up more than fifty fry. 



