DECAY OF SALMON. 133 



prohibited equally with engines of capture. If objects 

 in an estuary, striking merely the eye of a salmon, 

 frighten him back to the sea, a similar effect is more 

 than likely to follow from his running against miles of 

 posts and nets whenever he tries to take his natural 

 course along the coast to the river. If the merely 

 wasteful effects of fixed engines do not admit of such 

 explicit evidence as their destructive or devouring eflfects, 

 they admit of just as little doubt as to their existence, 

 and of no doubt at all as to their indefensibleness. 



