18 FISH CULTUKE. 



US further suppose him to be so supremely foolish as 

 to yearly kiU all his sheep indiscriminately down to 

 some fifty, not excepting even those which are about 

 to drop lambs, nor those lambs which are just born. 

 It is abundantly clear that his fifty sheep wiU not 

 keep his farm stocked, and that ruin must in time 

 ensue. Yet still he goes on slaughtering, and won- 

 dering that his farm does not produce as many sheep 

 as it did formerly. This is somewhat the case on 

 many of our best salmon rivers.^ But to make the 

 case still more clear to those unacquainted with 

 the salmon, save through the medium of a fish- 

 monger, we must briefly trace the natural history 

 of the salmon as it is generally set forth and 

 accepted by those best acquainted with it. Salmon 

 leave the sea, and run up into the rivers, at all 

 times of the year, for the purpose, sooner or later, 

 of depositing their spawn in the shallows and fords 

 of the higher parts of the rivers. Some enter the 

 rivers in the spring, and push their way up from 

 pool to pool through the summer, until they reach 

 the upper waters, and these are of course the first 



^ The causes of the decrease of salmon, and how it befalls that a 

 sufficient number of fish do not run up the rivers to spawn, will be 

 found in a practical detail of the modes of slaughtering salmon, 

 (practised but lately, and not yet altogether in disuse,) in the 

 Appendix. 



