APPENDIX. 295 



; in Canada, let us now turn our attention for a few moments to their 

 preservation in the rivers in which they still abound. These rivers 

 I believe to be as valuable and inexhaustible as any others upon the 

 face of the globe; but so circumstanced that their capabilities have 

 not been developed, and that one year of neglect will cause their 

 serious injury, if not their utter destruction as salmon streams. 

 They extend along the northern shore of the St. Lawrence from 

 Quebec to Labrador, a distance of about 500 miles, and are many 

 in number. They are chiefly held under lease from the Govern- 

 ment of Canada, by the Hudson's Bay Company, who fish some of 

 them in an unsystematic manner, with standing nets, because they 

 can be conveniently and cheaply so fished, whilst others are left 

 wholly to the destructive spear of the Indian. In the smaller 

 streams on which the fishermen of the company are employed, a 

 series of standing barrier nets (which kill indiscriminately every 

 fish of every size and weight) is used, a process which in Euro- 

 pean rivers would have long since banished salmon from them. 

 But in Canada the high water in the spring enables some of the 

 largest and strongest of the breeding fish to ascend the streams 

 before those nets can be set, and when they get beyond them, 

 they are comparatively safe in the mountain rivers and lakes, 

 which never hear a human footfall till winter which congeals 

 their surfaces into ice tempts the poor Indian to tread their 

 banks in pursuit of the bear, the martin, the mink, and the 

 otter. 



In well regulated salmon fisheries in Europe, the fish by the 

 construction of proper weirs and reservoirs are almost as much 

 under the control of the managers as the sheep on their farms or 

 the fowl in their poultry yards. They can send such of them as 

 they please to market, permit the fittest for the purpose to pass on 

 to propagate their kind, allow the young to enjoy life till they 

 become mature, and suffer the sick and unhealthy to return to 

 their invigorating pastures in the depth of the ocean. But 



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