286 Flow to obtain it. 
fish that push up to the very sources of some of our rivers. Let 
us follow them. First, they are blocked in some pool half-way 
up stream by an obstruction that is impassable except during a 
heavy flood. What takes place? Why, half of them are taken 
out by poachers, and maybe even a larger proportion. The 
wholesale or professional poacher, call him what you will, attends 
to his work. 
Then after awhile a friendly flood comes down and helps 
the remainder of the fish over the barrier, and they are soon 
scattered over the head waters of the stream. The flood subsides, 
and the water is soon in the other extremity. The rapid torrent 
becomes a succession of clear pools with fish in them, and so 
little water that they are unable to pass from one pool to another. 
Another class of poacher now appears, and he is the individual 
who would not go far out of his way to catch a salmon, but who, 
on seeing one under a bank or in a pool, and a pitch-fork handy, 
considers that he has as much right to the fish as anyone else, and 
carries it home under his coat. So that not a few of these fish 
never reach the spawning beds at all. But suppose a fourth of 
them get there. They have escaped their greatest enemy, but 
they have not forgotten him. They do things in a hurry, as I 
have found on many occasions, and the eggs are often washed 
away, or buried, or left dry. 
But after all some of them reach the hatching point—What 
then? They hatch in spring, and having absorbed their sacs, if 
spared to live so long, they start upon a journey. I have watched 
them coming down the streams, and have seen how in every pool 
they have to run the gauntlet. Hungry trout waiting their prey 
get fully half of them, the birds pick up a few; all the way down 
for miles they run the risk of being devoured by eels and other 
fish, and probably very few indeed ever live to return to the river 
as mature salmon. Eels should be well looked after on every 
salmon river. They are well attended to in New Zealand, I see, 
by one of the reports lately to hand. 
There is a serious falling off in the catch of salmon on many 
of our rivers, and when this is the case there is usually a cry made 
for the extension of the fishing season, which, if allowed, would 
only tend to reduce the stock of salmon still more. On the other 
