American Fisheries Society 77 



in the situation, owing to the pressure of a few enterprising- 

 people, who are Ix'tter aware of the disastrous consequences of 

 the state of things prevailing on the rivers. For some six or 

 seven years a movement has been started that is daily gaining- 

 grouiid, and tlial lias hegun to tell on public opinion. In Eng- 

 land, there is no il()nl)t. the l)etter preservation of salmon has 

 l)een due in great measure to the presence and to the efforts of a 

 mighty body of sahnon anglers. France, however, has never 

 been able to rely on any such assistance. Salmon angling is, 

 in fact, so little known in France, or practised in so very few 

 places, that it interests practically only a small minority. Up to 

 the last two or three decades, angling was not much in honor 

 amongst French gentry, who preferred the gun and the whip, 

 and left the rod somewhat scornfully to the lower classes. Even 

 they for a long time never dreamed about the possibility of cap- 

 turing the noble iish by hook md line until the practice was 

 imported into Brittany by British residents, some fifty or sixty 

 years ago. And even there, with a few exceptions, salmon 

 angling has never been carried on except in a sort of pothunting 

 and unsportsmanlike fashion, by people whose sole object was the 

 profit which they could derive from it, and who were totally un- 

 able, by position, short-sightedness, or ignorance, to understand 

 the importance of the salmon question, or to view it on the broad 

 lines on which it ought to be considered. Everywhere else the 

 situation is still worse, salmon fisheries being mostly in the 

 hands of inland netsmen, whose motto was always and is still 

 equivalent to destruction. 



The starting of a movement for the preservation of salmon 

 was therefore, in such circumstances, particularly dilficult, there 

 teing, in fact, but one large corporation interested in the matter, 

 the Inscrits Maritimes of the estuaries. Their mental attitude 

 was no better than that of the netsmen, and their action wa^ 

 always exercised in the most dangerous way. It would take too 

 much space to give here an account of their various and incessant 

 efforts to obtain increased privileges and to get rid, by degrees, 

 of the last few restrictions that afford, nominally, a semblance of 

 protection for the salmon and other migratory species (shads, 

 lampreys, &c.). Suffice it to say that, up to 1899, far from' 

 meeting with any counter-party, they were the object of unceas- 



