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the mouths of the rivers, and to destroy them when they 

 were on the spawning beds : and to those two things alone 

 was due the large increase which had taken place. He 

 did not for a moment wish to depreciate the value of the 

 efforts made by fish culturists in Canada and the United 

 States, but he thought before they went very largely 

 into salmon hatching in England they must do a great deal 

 more to make the rivers fitter to receive the fish to be 

 put into them, by removing pollutions. Means should also 

 be adopted to enable the salmon to pass at their own free 

 will up and beyond the dams which cut them off from the 

 spawning beds. Mr. Milne Home had referred to the ques- 

 tion of pollutions, and he would take that opportunity of 

 congratulating him upon the result of an action which had 

 been tried at the Court of Session, the result of which 

 would be that one of the tributaries of the Tweed would 

 be freed from its pollutions. The artificial culture of fish 

 had been of enormous advantage in stocking waters with 

 fish, which those waters had never contained before ; but 

 he thought that by purifying the rivers, by placing ladders 

 which would enable the fish to surmount the weirs, by 

 protecting the fry of the fish in the upper waters, and in 

 the lower waters by preventing the fishermen entirely 

 blocking the mouths of the rivers by enormous nets, 

 they would be able to greatly improve the salmon 

 fisheries ; and then artificial culture might come in. If 

 they took the pollutions out of the Thames, and put 

 ladders up the weirs, they might bring back the day when 

 twenty or thirty salmon used to be caught at a haul, and 

 when salmon used to sport themselves opposite the home 

 of the Legislature at St. Stephen's. He hoped the Legis- 

 lature would take heart of grace, and insist upon the 

 pollutions being removed from the Thames and other 



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