APPENDIX XIII. 



351 



winter's store. Permission to angle for that fish is a favor 

 not very easily procured, because even the worst upper 

 waters can be let each season at a good figure ; and more 

 than all that, the fish has become individually so valuable 

 as to tempt persons, by way of business, to engage ex- 

 tensively in its capture at times when it is unlawful to take 

 it, and the animal is totally unfit for food. A prime sal- 

 mon is, on the average, quite as valuable as a Southdown 

 sheep or an obese pig, both of which cost money to rear 

 and fatten ; and at certain periods of the year salmon has 

 been known to bring as much as ten shillings per pound- 

 weight in a London fish-shop. There have been many 

 causes at work to bring about this falling off in our sup- 

 plies ; but ignorance of the natural history of the fish, the 

 want of accord between the upper and lower proprietors 

 of salmon rivers, the use of stake and bag nets, poaching 

 during close times, and the consequent capture of thou- 

 sands of gravid fish, as well as the immense amount of 

 overfishing by the lessees of fishing stations, are doubtless 

 among the chief reasons. 



If these misfortunes occur with an important and indi- 

 vidually valuable fish like the salmon, which is so well 

 hedged round by protective laws, and which is so accessi- 

 ble that we can watch it day by day in our rivers, — and 

 that such misfortunes have occurred is quite patent to the 

 world ; indeed, some of the best streams of England, atone 

 time noted for their salmon, are at this moment nearly des- 

 titute of fish, — how much more is it likely, then, that 

 similar misfortunes may occur to the unwatched and un- 

 protected fishes of the sea, which spawn in a greater world 

 of water, with thousands of chances against their seed 

 being even so much as fructified, let alone any hope of its 

 ever being developed into fish fit for table purposes. In 

 the sea the larger fish are constantly preying on the 

 smaller, and the waste of life, as I have elsewhere ex- 



