104 AMERICAN FISH CULT0KE. 



In seeking the mouths of their native streams, the 

 salmon of two or more rivers may pass a point in bay or 

 estuary where a net extends from the shore, and the catch 

 may embrace a portion of each. When this occurs, as it 

 frequently does on the Bay of Chaleurs, one of the habitans, 

 who may be standing by, can easily point out the fish of 

 each river : this, he will say, belongs to the Ristigouche, 

 and that to the Nipissiguit. The difference is as clear 

 to him, as the dissimilarity between a Durham and an 

 Alderney cow would be to one of our farmers. There is a 

 peculiarity in the formation and general appearance of the 

 salmon of a river which is transmitted to their progeny; 

 therefore, if we are successful, as we will no doubt be, in 

 introducing the salmon in our waters, the fish of the Con- 

 necticut, in the course of some generations, will differ from 

 those of the Delaware. Those of one river may be short 

 and thick-set, while those of the other may be long of body 

 and twice the average size of the former. 



Salmon at one time, north of the Hudson, were not ex- 

 clusively for the opulent, they were as much or more the 

 food of the poor, because they were cheap. Even now, 

 when in season, on the coast and in the rivers of the 

 British Provinces they can be bought for four or five cents 

 a pound; and the angler from the States, as he takes his 

 hook from the mouth of a pretty ten-pounder, on a stream 

 of the Bay of Chaleurs or the north shore of the St. Law- 

 rence, turns the fish over with the toe of his boot and men- 

 tally says : " Well, it is only worth fifty cents, now that I 

 have landed it." He would give five, or even ten dollars, 



