377 
of Edinburgh , Session 1879 - 80 . 
air can circulate. Salmon crowded in a pool in a river, through 
which a stream of water flows freely, are in a condition similar to a 
herd of cattle crowded in a pen or fold, in the open air on a hill-side, 
where pure air is inexhaustible. In like manner salmon crowded in 
a pool are provided with a continuous supply of oxygen by the con- 
stant flow of the river through the pool. 
As to overstocking, my own opinion as an angler of fifty years’ 
experience, and as a net fisher for a fifth of that time, is that I never 
found the fish too plentiful anywhere; and I do not think there ever 
can be too many, especially trout, grilse, and salmon, in any of our 
rivers. Very curiously, those who advocated the theory of overstock- 
ing as the cause of the fungus disease, are in many instances the very 
persons who grumble at the scarcity of the fish in question, and 
propose to increase their number by killing them for eight or ten 
days longer at the latter end of the season, when the fish best 
adapted for breeding are entering the rivers. Regarding the food 
supply in overstocking, I quote the following statement cited by Sir 
Samuel Wilson of Ercildoune, Australia, in his work on the acclima- 
tisation of Californian salmon. “ It is stated by Mr Vincent Cooke 
of the Oregon Packing Company, that out of 98,000 salmon caught 
in the Columbia River in 1874, three only were found with some 
trace of food in their stomachs, and those seemed to have quitted the 
salt water very recently.” 
The fact that the house drains into the moat might be urged by 
some as an argument that the water there is rendered foul by the 
house sewage, and that the pollution of the water may have had 
some influence in developing the disease. In reply to this it must 
be stated, that, as Dr Church points out, a large body of water flows 
through the' moat hourly, and so far from ordinary house drainage 
being prejudicial to fish, where the water is frequently changed, the 
finest fish, as the pike, perch, and eel, are to be caught in the neigh- 
bourhood of the house drains. Rut if it were proved that the house 
drainage mingling with the water of the’ moat served as an exciting 
cause for the development and propagation of the fungus in the 
moat, this could not be advanced as a reason for the appearance of 
the disease in the upper pond, which was fed by an uncontaminated 
stream. Neither could diseased fish from the moat find their way to 
the upper pond so as to infect the fish there, as there is not only a 
