PRESERVATION OF SALMON IN CANADA. 5 



upon having their present barren rivers stocked with as valuable arti- 

 cles of consumption and of commerce as their fowl-houses or their 

 farm -yards. 



I shall, for brevity's sake, abstain from enlarging on this subject, 

 merely observing: that ample information can be obtained upon it by 

 consulting the works of M.M. Coste and Fry, which are to be found 

 in the libraries and bookshops in this city ; and that in the streams in 

 which it may be put into operation — if there are mill-dams upon 

 them — the artificial construction to enable the fish to descend and 

 ascend to and from the sea will still be requisite. 



Having said so much on the decrease and restoration of salmon in 

 Canada, let us now turn our attention for a few moments to their pre- 

 servation in the rivers in which they still abound. These rivers I 

 believe to be as valuable and inexhaustible as any others upon the 

 face of the globe, but so circumstanced that their capabilities have 

 not been developed, and that one year of neglect will cause their ser- 

 ious injury, if not their utter destruction, as salmon streams. They 

 extend along the northern shore of the St. Lawrence from Quebec 

 to Labrador, a distance of about 500 miles, and are many in number. 

 They are chiefly held under lease from the Government of Canada, 

 by the Hudson's Bay Company, who fish some of them in an unsys- 

 tematic manner, with standing nets, because they can be conveniently 

 and cheaply so fished, whilst others are left wholly to the destructive 

 spear of the Indian. In the smaller streams on which the fishermen 

 of the company are employed, a series of standing barrier-nets, 

 (which kill indiscriminately every fish of every size and weight,) is 

 used, a process, which in European rivers, would have long since ban- 

 ished salmon from them. But in Canada the high water in the spring 

 enables some of the largest and strongest of the breeding fish to as- 

 cend the streams before those nets can be set, and when they get 

 beyond them, they are comparatively safe in the mountain rivers and 

 lakes which never hear a human footfall till winter — which congeals 

 their surfaces into ice — tempts the poor Indian to tread their banks in 

 pursuit of the bear, the marten, the mink and the otter. 



In well regulated salmon fisheries in Europe, the fish — by the con- 

 struction of proper weirs and reservoirs — are almost as much under 

 the control of the managers as the sheep on their farms or the fowl 

 in their poultry-yards. They can send such of them as they please 

 to market, permit the fittest for the purpose to pass on to propagate 

 their kind, allow the young to enjoy life till they become mature, and 

 suffer the sick and unhealthy to return to their invigorating pastures 



