Hoio and Where Salmon fishing may le Obtained. 9 



of our northern boundary and pushed the line so far 

 south of the St. Lawrence, he left ns few salmon-rivers on 

 our Atlantic seaboard. What is done, is done, and it' is 

 too late to remedy that now; but whenever we look at 

 the map it is difficult to repress a sigh of regret that our 

 commissioners were not salmon-fishermen. 



In the last century salmon swarmed in every river on 

 our coast, at least as far south as the Connecticut. They 

 have disappeared. It would be well were it thoroughly 

 and widely understood that a river once thus depleted 

 remains forever barren, unless man intervenes and re- 

 stocks it by patient, protracted, and persevering effort. 

 Nature has implanted within the salmon an impulse to 

 breed in the river where it was itself bred, and in no 

 other. When an artificial barrier closes the ascent of a 

 stream they still return until they die. But their spawn, 

 necessarily cast in localities unsuited to its development, 

 perish. No other generation succeeds that in existence 

 when the obstacle was created, and the river once swarm- 

 ing with fish speedily becomes barren. And so it will 

 remain, even though the original conditions be restored, 

 until a new race is introduced by man. 



Since salmon obtain their growth in the sea and lose 

 rather than gain in fresh water, it would seem as if all 

 rivers ought to furnish fish of approximately the same 

 size. Such is not the fact. In some rivers, excluding 

 extremes as it seems to me should always be done in such 

 cases, the fish will run about ten or twelve pounds in 

 weight, and a fish of eighteen pounds will be a rare prize. 

 In other rivers no larger, and in the immediate neighbor- 

 hood of the others, the fish may average twenty pounds 

 and over, and fish of forty pounds be as common as fish 



