DECAY OF SALMON. 89 



newer fisheries than a general decay. That salmon have 

 greatly diminished, are even still diminishing, and ought 

 to be increased, are all truths. What is here sought to 

 be guarded against is merely the deduction that that 

 diminution is to be measured either by the decrease in 

 the yield of some of what used to be^ the most productive 

 fisheries, or by the facts that formerly salmon were in 

 some places a cheap and abundant commodity, and now 

 are everywhere a costly luxury. 



The ease and rapidity with which scarcity can be in- 

 flicted on a natural product such as salmon are visible 

 even in the history of regions where the fish is or was 

 incomparably more abundant, and the means and induce- 

 ments to capture incomparably smaller, than at almost 

 any time or in any district in the United Kingdom. 

 Some of the American rivers, whose salmon supplied food 

 only to a few hundreds of wandering Indians, are re- 

 ported by recent travellers to have been depopulated, and 

 the supply to have been brought far below the demand, 

 merely by the disregard of seasons, though very slight 

 care and a little well-timed abstinence would have con- 

 tinued and increased a natural supply capable of meet- 

 ing ten times the demand. There are few regions in the 

 world that had more salmon, and that even yet have 

 fewer men, than Labrador and the northern shores of the 

 lower St. Lawrence ; yet even there it is complained, 

 in most of the recent works regarding British North 

 America, and also in various documents issued by the 

 Canadian Government, that abundance has by neglect 

 and abuse been turned to scarcity. "Thirty years 

 ago," said the Kev. W. Agar Adamson, in a paper read 



