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this terrible disease would be arrived at He believed, too, 

 that it was only within a few years past that it had pre- 

 vailed very largely in the rivers of Britain; he had 

 been engaged in connection with fisheries for many years 

 past, and sixteen years ago this disease was known within 

 the small confines of the house where he was engaged in 

 fish breeding, and his opinion, though he might be 

 wrong, was that it was only brought about by a pollu- 

 tion of the water, and the increased heat occasioned by 

 the country being cleared of its forests. This tended to 

 bring down in the river immense quantities of infinites- 

 simal vegetable spores, which floating down came in con- 

 tact with the diseased fish, or fish which had been injured 

 by the fishermen and others, and produced Saprolegnia. In 

 catching these fish in the stream, in the province of On- 

 tario, for the purpose of cultivation, it was found that many 

 fish died from the following cause. The fish had to be 

 caught by hand in the stream, and strict instructions were 

 given to the men always to catch them by the tail, be- 

 cause, in catching them by the head the gills were always 

 injured, and that necessarily proved fatal. The men went 

 into the river, waded up the stream, and caught the fish on 

 their beds at night, and at other times, in the day time, when 

 they had their heads underneath the logs which abounded 

 in the stream. The fishermen then carried the fish twenty 

 or thirty rods to the house ; but they invariably found, after 

 the first or second year, that many of these fish died, the 

 reason being that round the tail where the men had caught 

 the fish, this peculiar sort of fungoid growth appeared, 

 which spread until the fish was killed. This was in 1867 

 or 1868, before he knew anything of Saprolegnia. In order 

 to avoid it they introduced common gloves, which had been 

 used ever since, because they were found less likely to 



