NON-LEGISLATIVE REMEDIES. 221 



being, like land, rendered immensely more productive by 

 the appliances of art or skill. Water may, in truth, be 

 said to be naturally more productive than land — many 

 kinds of fish, including the most valuable, reproduce their 

 kind by tens of thousands per pair every year ; but in 

 this fact must be recognised, too, a provision of Nature 

 to compensate for the incomparably greater waste or de- 

 struction which aflflicts the inhabitants of the water than 

 at least any useful species upon the land. The fact, how- 

 ever, that Nature, for whatever ends, has made the water 

 more prolific than the land, is no reason at all why man 

 should reduce the water to sterility while making such 

 efforts to maintain and increase the fertility of the land ; 

 nay, should even destroy the water with what might 

 further enrich the land. For it is a fact, that whilst the 

 utmost that skiU, capital, and labour could do has been 

 done for the land, not only has -nothing been done for 

 the water, but a great deal has been done against it ; and 

 especially, enormous mischief is done by materials that 

 should be kept to give fertility to the land being sent 

 away to infiict sterility on the waters. 



At last, however, something is being done for the 

 water; the discovery has been made, or re-made, that 

 man can, by enclosure and cultivation, do perhaps as 

 much for fish as he can for plants. Pisciculture, or the 

 cultivation of fish, is now a great industry in France, and 

 is beginning to assume large proportions even in this 

 country. To narrate aU that has been done would be here 

 quite out of place, for our topic is only salmon, which, as 

 a migratory fish, must always form a separate or special, 

 if not a comparatively small department of this new 



