FISH AND FISHERIES. 153 
About the time that M. Coste was succeeding in his experiments Mr. 
Thomas Ashworth, of Cheshire, who with his brother was the owner of 
the Galway Salmon Fishery, commenced his operations. In a very short 
time—less than ten years—he had stocked with salmon various streams 
that previously had no salmon in them, as well as a district in their 
fishery 30 miles long by 10 wide.* 
Scotland has also of late years done much for her fisheries. The 
establishment of Stormontfield, on the Tay, is now according to the late 
Mr. Buckland, a household word, and the observations both practical and 
scientific made by Messrs. Buist & Brown are of the highest import- 
ance, Ata very small expense hundreds of millions of ova have been 
hatched and distributed. To give an example of what this has effected : 
in 1828 the rental of the fishery proprietors of the Tay was £14,574 ; 
it gradually fell off every year afterwards until 1852, when it reached 
£7,953, or nearly one-half; in 1853 the artificial rearing commenced ; 
in 1858 the rental rose to £11,487, and in 1862 it had reached the value of 
1828. This rise was not due to the increase of the value of salmon, be- 
cause the increased price arose from scarcity, and the other fisheries 
which had not been re-stocked presented a gradually falling rental. 
Things have improved generally throughout England, Scotland, and 
Treland since those days. There salmon was rare and dear, and far in 
arrear of the demand, and though the London market alone has increased 
amazingly meanwhile, the salmon supply has kept pace with it. Not 
only that, but the rivers of Scotland especially are apparently more abund- 
antly stocked than ever in this century, and rivers which had been 
cleared of salmon are now full again.{ The last salmon caught in the 
Thames, says Mr. Buckland (writing in 1863), was nearly fifty years ago. 
He was caught at Windsor, and weighed 20 lbs. George IV bought him 
for twenty guineas. The mud and sewerage of the Thames has some- 
what impeded the re-stocking of the river. 
The salmon which we use so abundantly in the Colonies, and which 
comes to us in the well-known tin cases, is Onchorrhyncus quinnat, a fish 
which only differs from the salmon in the increased number of anal rays, 
which always number more than fourteen. All the species are migratory, 
ascending rivers flowing into the Pacific from the northern portions of 
the American and Asiatic continent. There are annually many millions 
of these fishes preserved, or as they call it “tinned,” on the Sacramento 
and Columbia Rivers, but the supply is kept up by the artificial hatch- 
ing and liberation of what is estimated to be two and a half millions of 
* For a full account of these successes see ‘‘A Treatise on the Propagation of 
Salmon and other Fish,” by Edward and Thomas Ashworth, London. Simpkin & 
Marshall, 1853. 
+ See Natural History of the Salmon as ascertained by the recent experiments 
on the artificial spawning and hatching of the ova and rearing of the fry, at Stor- 
montfield, on the Tay. Arthur Hall, Virtue & Co., London, 1858. By W. 
Brown. 
+ The value of the salmon fisheries in 1871 was as follows :—England, £90,000 ; 
Treland, £400,000 ; Scotland, £200,000. The sales at Billingsgate market for the 
game year were 1,764 tons of salmon, valued at £246,925, which is a little less 
than the average annual sale in London. 
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