84 THE SALMON. 



can no longer be kept under inspection and protection. 

 Of course the number of fish marked can bear but a 

 small proportion to the whole number of emigrants, or 

 outward-bound ; the number of immigrants, or home- 

 ward-bound, bears, it is greatly to be feared, but a small 

 proportion to the number that went out ; and of the fish 

 that do return, the proportion captured by man is not 

 large. It has often, or indeed in the majority of cases, 

 chanced that among the captured immigrants there was not 

 one of the marked emigrants ; even in the most successful 

 cases, the captures have scarcely been above two or three 

 per cent, of the marked, which, considering the risks of 

 mistake, the possibility of tricks, and the more than 

 probability of exceptional cases, must be regarded as 

 supplying rather scant data. 



Some of these experiments, nevertheless, even by the 

 great extent to which they have failed regarding their 

 special purposes, have served to admonish us of another 

 fact of which we were scarcely in search — the fact that 

 there is an enormous destruction of salmon life taking 

 place elsewhere than in the rivers, and otherwise than by 

 the inventions of man. In illustration, we give the facts 

 of one of the cases most fully within our knowledge. 

 In the spring of 1852, about 500 kelts were marked 

 with wire in a pool, within a few yards of tide reach, at 

 the bottom of the river "Whitadder, which joins the 

 Tweed immediately above Berwick. The circumstances 

 were somewhat unfavourable — a long drought retarding 

 the departure of the fish ; but doubtless the great 

 majority of them got safely away. And they went 



