OF NORTH AMERICA. 87 



ginian waters, the first discoverers, who had learned, from the accounts of 

 the northern adventurers, to look for salmon in all American streams, gave 

 the name of white salmon to a fish which, in the absence of the Salmo salar, 

 they did find in the estuaries they entered ; and which still, though belong- 

 ing to a totally distinct family, being a percoid fish, in the vernacular, the 

 growler, retains the honours of its unduly-applied title. 



In respect of fish, no natural cause prevents their co-existence, in the 

 greatest abundance, with man in his highest state of civilisation and refine- 

 ment, in the midst of the greatest agricultural or manufacturing opulence. 



Easily scared, in the first instance, by unusual sights — for it has been, we 

 think, thoroughly proved by a series of curious and interesting experiments 

 on the trout, that most kinds of fish are insensible to sounds * — the natives 

 of the water speedily become reconciled to appearances, which become 

 habitual, when found to be connected with no danger. 



Consequently large cities on their river margins, great dams and piles of 

 buildings projected into the waters, the dash of mill-wheels, and the paddles 

 of steamers, have no perceptible effect in deterring fish from frequenting 

 otherwise favourable localities. Every angler knows that the pool beneath 

 the mill-wheel is, nine times out of ten, the resort of the largest and fattest 

 brook trout in the stream. Every shad-fisher knows that the growth of 

 Philadelphia and New York has in nowise affected the run of shad up the 

 Delaware or Hudson, how much soever his own indiscriminate destruction 

 of them by stake-nets, by the seine, and, worst of all, by capturing the 

 spent-fish, when returning weak and worthless to the sea, after spawning, 

 and known as " fall shad," may have decimated their numbers, and may 

 threaten their speedy annihilation. It is well known that the vast saw- 

 mills at Indian Old-town, on the Penobscot, with their continual clash and 

 clang and their glaring lights, blazing the night through, have no effect in 

 preventing the ascent of salmon into the upper waters of that noble river, 

 wherein they still breed abundantly. It has been proved, beyond the 

 possibility of question, by the vast increase of salmon in the Tay, the Forth, 

 the Clyde, and other Scottish rivers, since the enforcement of protective 

 laws by the British Fishery Boards, that the continual transit of steamers 

 to and fro has no injurious effect on their migrations. 



In a word, it is fully established that, if care be taken to prevent and 

 restrain the erection of obstacles to the ascent of these fish from the salt 

 into the fresh waters, for the deposition of their spawn, and if protective 

 laws be rigidly enforced, to render impossible the wanton destruction of the 

 breeding fish on their spawning beds, and during the season when their 

 flesh is not only valueless, but actually unwholesome, while they are en- 

 gaged in the process of breeding, or are returning, spent, lean, large- 

 headed, flaccid, and ill-conditioned to the sea, for the purpose of recupera- 

 ting their health and reinvigorating their system, by the marine food, 



' Those who are curious on this subject are referred to a very clever little work, 

 " The Flyfisher's Entomology," London, 1839, pp. 1, 20. 



