THE NEW ABT OF BREEDING FISH. 125 



ova, whicli is considerably under the mark. The 

 salmon choose for their spawning places, technically 

 called ' Kidds,' the rough beds of gravel which con- 

 nect the foot of one pool with the head of the next. 

 In the Hodder these gravel beds occur at intervals, 

 varying from 100 to 300 yards. Assume that there 

 are five such spawning places in one mile of water, 

 then ten miles of river would contain fifty of them. 

 Assume that 10 fish spawn annually on each of 

 these gravel beds, the result would be, that, in these 

 ten miles of water, 500 salmon would produce 

 5,000,000 of ova, which, if they arrived at the ma- 

 turity of their parents, would extend in a continuous 

 line, head to tail, upwards of 2,000 miles. Now 

 these results are so startling, as to prove at once 

 that it is not from the deficiency of young fry that 

 we have to lament the decrease in the number of 

 salmon. The mischief must be sought for elsewhere. 

 If only one fish in a hundred of those which are bred 

 in the river returned to it mature salmon, we should 

 have to boast of 50,000 annually in the Hodder ; 

 yet, for the purposes of this illustration, I have as- 

 sumed only 500 pair cff breeding fish." No doubt 

 salmon fry are not sufficiently protected, and no 

 doubt that if "one in a hundted" returned to its 

 native river, we should have abundance of salmon. 

 But I conceive this is no argument against artificial 

 breeding. Will artificial breeding increase or not 

 the number of salmon fry ? If it do, though the 

 loss will be greater, the return of them as grilse will 



