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destruction has been completed. The familiar nursery 
thyme about the egg applies here with peculiar fitness : 
‘“‘Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, 
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. 
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men 
Could not set Humpty as before.”’ 
That is the whole thing, so to speak, in an eggshell. 
After the salmon rivers are ruined all the king’s horses 
and all the king’s men, that is to say, all the power of 
the government, ‘cannot set them as before.” 
Let us act then at once and try to do something for 
the salmon before it is too late. Dangerous complica- 
tions may come suddenly upon us which we cannot foresee. 
How little we foresaw the danger to the buffalo and the 
fur seals. How suddenly the disastrous results came. 
Even if not impracticable it may cost large sums of 
money to do hereafter what may be done now for 
nothing. No expense may be incurred at present. All 
that is required is to have Afognak Island or some other 
suitable place set aside by national authority as Gen. 
Grant set aside the McCloud River Reservation during 
his administration, and it can be left to further events to 
decide whether it is expedient to expend any money on 
the reservation, a subject that can be safely left, we all 
know, in the hands of our efficient Commissioner of Fish 
and Fisheries. There seems to be no impropriety in the 
United States having a national salmon park, but on the 
contrary it appears eminently proper that a great natural 
salmon country like ours should have set apart some safe 
repository and fruitful breeding grounds for this noble 
fish. 
Consider for a moment what the salmon has done for 
us, and then think how mercilessly we have treated him. 
Our salmon has been to us a source of national revenue, 
enjoyment and pride, and what return have we meted 
out to him? He has been hunted pitilessly with hooks 
and spears, with all kinds of nets and pounds, with wheels 
and guns and dynamite, and there is not a cubic foot of 
