220 THE INHABITANTS OP THE SEA. 



the growth of the young fish step by step until it ultimately 

 changed into the kingly salmon. 



This ignorance of the true nature of the parr had most disas- 

 trous effects, as it largely contributed to the depopulation of our 

 streams, for the farmers and cottars who resided near the rivers 

 used not unfrequently, after filling the frying-pan with parr, to 

 feed their pigs with them, and myriads were annually killed by 

 juvenile anglers. This truly deplorable havoc has fortunately 

 been arrested by Act of Parliament, but the killing of grilse is 

 still, I believe, a fertile source of destruction,* and should 

 undoubtedly be restrained by law, as the wholesale slaughter of 

 these juvenile fishes is a most lamentable example of impro- 

 vident waste. 



In former times our rivers abounded with salmon, more than 

 200,000 having been caught in a single summer in the Tweed 

 alone, and 2,500 at one haul in the river Thurso ; but, besides 

 the causes above mentioned, over fishing or fishing at an im- 

 proper season, and probably in many cases the pollution of the 

 streams with deleterious matter from mines or manufactories, 

 have considerably reduced their numbers. Fortunately, public 

 attention has at length been thoroughly aroused to the danger 

 which menaces our king of fishes ; and, what with better laws for 

 his protection and the successful attempts that have latterly 

 been made in artificial fish-breeding, we may hope that more 

 prosperous times are in store for our salmon-fisheries. 



The salmon not only frequents the streams of Northern 

 Europe but ascends in vast multitudes the giant rivers of 



Siberia and of North America. It 

 is fished by the Ostjak and the 

 Tunguse, and speared by the Indian 

 of the New World. Eoss's Arctic 

 saimo Rossu salmon, which is of a more slender 



form than the common salmon, 

 differently marked and coloured, and with a remarkably long 

 under jaw, is so extremely abundant in the sea near the 

 mouths of the rivers of Boothia Felix that 3,378 were obtained 

 at one haul of a small-sized seine. The rivers of Kamtschatka 

 abound in salmon of various kinds, so that the stream, 



* In 1862, 8,467 salmon and 25,042 grilse were captured in the Tweed. 



