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the Petit Saguenay, the Esooumins, Port Neuf, Rimonski, 

 Metis, and others that might be named ; the real cause of 

 the decrease is the insuperable obstacles presented by mill- 

 dams, which prevent them from ascending to the serated 

 waters, high up the streams, which are essential for the 

 fecundation of their ova, and so for the propagation of the 

 species. Would you then — it may be asked, pull down 

 our mills in order that we might have salmon in our 

 rivers ? most certainly not, I'reply, for it is quite possible 

 to maintain all our mills, with all their mill-dams, and yet 

 afford to the fish an easy and inexpensive mode of pass- 

 ing upwards to their breeding planes. 



Marvellous stories-are told of the great Iieights which 

 salmon will leap in order to surmount the obstacles which 

 nature or art may have erected between the lower parts of 

 a stream and the upper waters which are suited to breed- 

 ing purposes. Natural historians used gravely to tell us 

 that salmon, in order to jump high, were in the habit of 

 placing their tails in their mouths, and then, bending them- 

 selves like a bow, bound out of the water to a considera- 

 ble distance, from twelve to twenty feet. The late Mr. 

 Scrope, in his beautiful book "Days and Nights of Salmon 

 Fishing," calculates that six feet in height is more than 

 the average spring of salmon, though he conceives -that 

 very large fish in deep water, could leap much higher. He 

 says, " Large fi§h can leap much higher than small ones ; 

 but their powers are limited or augmented according to 

 the depth of water they spring from ; in shallow water 

 they have little power of ascension, in deep they have the 

 most considerable. They rise very rapidly from the bot- 

 tom to the surface of the water by means of rowing and 

 e2 



