280 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE SALMON. 



In former days, before civilization had substituted man and his dwellings for the broad 

 meadows and their furred and feathered inmates, the Salmon was found in many rivers. 

 Now, however, there are but few streams where this splendid fish can be seen, for, in the 

 greater number of European rivers, the water has been so defiled by human agency that the 

 fastidious Salmon will not suffer itself to be poisoned by such hateful mixture of evil odors 

 and polluted waters ; and in the few streams where the water is still sufficiently pure for 

 the Salmon to venture into them, the array of nets, weirs, and all kinds of Salmon traps is so 

 tremendous, that not one tithe of the normal number are now found in them. 



The ingenuity which has been exhibited in the invention of these "infernal machines," as 

 the fixed nets have been justly termed, and the amount of labor which has been expended in 



^MMO'H.—Satmo solar. SALMON TUOVT.—SatmotruUa. 



their manufacture, are worthy of a better cause ; for in their arrangement the habits of the 

 fish have been carefully studied, and, in their manufacture, its capabilities have been foreseen. 

 The evil has, of late years, arisen to so great a height, that the Salmon would soon have been 

 extirpated from European rivers, had not the nation Avisely interfered to prevent the loss 

 of so much national wealth, and given the fish a fair chance of re-establishing itself in 

 its former plenty. 



The short-sighted persons who plant all these obstructions forget that by this wholesale 

 destruction of the Salmon they are acting against their own interests, and that if they destroy 

 the ill-conditioned and young fish, as well as the adult and healthy Salmon, they condemn 

 themselves to the probability of eating bad fish for the present, and the certainty of total 

 deprivation for the future. The fact, however, seems to be, that each petty proprietor of a 

 fishery is jealous of the neighbors above and below him, and indiscriminately slaughters all 



