2 ON THE DECREASE, EESTOEATION AND 



pursuing the course which Canada has hitherto imitated, this noble 

 fish has been almost exterminated. Twenty-five or thirty years ago 

 every stream tributary to the St. Lawrence, from Niagara to Labrador 

 on the north side, and to Gaspe basin on the south, abounded with sal- 

 mon. At the present moment, with the exception of a few in the 

 Jacques Cartier, there is not one to be found in any river between the 

 Falls of Niagara and the city of Quebec. This deplorable decrease 

 in a natural production of great value has arisen from two causes ; 

 1st. — the natural disposition of uncivilized man to destroy at all times 

 and at all seasons whatever has life and is fit for food ; and 2nd. — the 

 neglect of those persons who have constructed mill-dams, to attach to 

 them slides, or chutes, by ascending which the fish could pass onwards 

 to their spawning beds in the interior. It is supposed by many that 

 the dust from the sawmills getting into the gills of the salmon pre- 

 vents them from respirating freely, and so banishes them from the 

 streams on which such mills are situated, but I am persuaded that 

 this is a mistake, for salmon are found in considerable numbers at the 

 mouths of many such streams, below the dams. In the Marguerite, 

 in the Saguenay, at the Petit Saguenays, the Es-quemain, Port Neuf. 

 Rimouski, Metis, and others that might be named, the real cause 

 of the decrease is the insuperable obstacles presented hj 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 ask- 

 ed, 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 passing upwards to their breeding 

 places. 



Marvellous stories are told of the great heights 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 breeding 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 considerable 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 con- 

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

 He says, " Large fish can leap much higher than small ones; but 



