THE COMPLETE ANGLEK. 125 



horses just taken up from luxurious grass or clover-fields, and submitted 

 to dry feeding. The dry-feeding of salmon, are the insects, and larva?, 

 and small fish afforded to them in rivers. The consequence of dry- 

 feeding on good food in moderate quantity, is the same with quadrupeds 

 as with fish : they severally become less bulky, lose superfluous adipose 

 matter, which is replaced by increase of muscular fibre, and therefore, 

 though smaller in size, their strength and power of endurance are 

 greater. This will explain why the angler finds it frequently more 

 difficult to tire out a small fish than a larger one. For myself, I have 

 had over and over again an easier task in capturing with rod and line 

 a fresh -run salmon of fifteen pounds in weight, than a grilse half the 

 size, which has been a few weeks training, as it were, in short, but 

 strengthening commons in. fresh water. At all times a grilse will be 

 found more powerful than a salmon of the same weight, because the fins 

 of grilse are larger in proportion to the size of their bodies, than the 

 fins of adult salmon grilse possess, consequently, easier and greater 

 powers of locomotion than salmon. I cannot help fancying that the 

 aldermanic salmon, when put to the speed by the spur of the hook, 

 soon gets ' blown,' or, as a turfite would say, exhibits symptoms of 

 ' distress/ whilst its child or brother, limited to spare, wholesome, fresh- 

 water diet, has its air-passages and muscular tissues unclogged by obesity; 

 and, therefore, when compelled to make abnormal exertions, as it does 

 when hooked by the fly-fisher, it evinces greater power of endurance, or 

 * bottom/ as it is termed/' 



Breeding fish artificially, is a nice but by no means difficult series of 

 operations. Fish must be bred artificially in the same water from which 

 the spawn is taken. The first operation consists of making the spawn- 

 ing bed. Build a stout wall about six feet or more, in a moderately deep 

 and rapid stream, from the bank : the wall must be so high, as to dam 

 off the highest floods, and its length must be regulated according to the 

 number of beds you mean to make. If only one, a length of fifteen feet 

 will do if three, the wall must be fifty feet in length. There must be 

 an iron and wired grating at the top and bottom of the wall, between 

 them and the bank, to prevent the exit of the small salmon fry, and the 

 entrance of small trout and other piscine pirates. The bed, that is, all 

 the space between the wall and the bank, must consist of gravel and 

 sand, and it must be at its extreme depth five feet below the level of the 

 stream in which it is made : each bed of about three yards in length, 

 must be formed on a gradient of one inch to a foot or eighteen inches. 

 Towards the upper part of the inclined plane, the salmon spawn impreg- 

 nated, must be deposited and well covered in imder the gravel and sand. 

 The inclined plane is necessary to give rapidity to the current of water, 

 and that is necessary to the vivification of the ova. A sort of sluice 

 should be placed outside the upper grating of the beds to regulate the 

 flow of water, to dam it off when there are floods, and to let it run 

 freely when there are none. The depth of water in the deepest parts of 

 the beds should not exceed three feet. Each bed should have its separate 

 top and bottom grating. The beds should be formed by banks not so 

 much shaded by trees, or over-hanging rocks or cliffs as to prevent the 



