UC-NRLF

SALMON
FISHERIES

OF THE
UNIVERSITY

OF

' \

THE

SALMON FISHERIES

OF

. ENGLAND,

1868,

From authentic information obtained for the House of
Commons, to which is added valuable and exclusive
information, extracted from the Reports of the Commis-
sioners of Fisheries in

FRANCE, AMERICA, NORWAY, & RUSSIA,

THOMAS ASHWORTH, ESQ.

LONDON :
LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.

BATH :
WILLIAM LEWIS, "DIRECTORY" OFFICE.

(/Ht)

•*

A 7

CONTENTS,

PAGE.

Salmon Fisheries of England - - 4
Extracts from the Commissioners : —

Reports of the Fisheries - - 29

Destructive Effects of Mill Weirs - 36

Cultivation of a Salmon Fishery - 39

American River Fisheries - - 89
Extracts from the Commissioners : —

„ „ Reports on ditto- - 91

„ „ Fisheries of Norway - - 105

Fisheries of Russia - - 109

NATURAL SALMON PASS,

The Frontispiece is a Lithographed Drawing of a natural Salmon
ladder at Oughterard Falls, in Connemara, over which thousands of
Salmon pass every year. The fall is less than one foot in five — the
fish leap from a deep hole at the foot of the fall, and by a succession
of short leaps from irregular resting places, at the backs of prominent
rocks, by which the current is split, they are enabled to pass up step
by step, to their breeding grounds. The stream is about 30 feet in
width, and has three lakes above the falls, with various tributaries in
which the Salmon deposit their ova.

THE

SALMON FISHERIES

or

ENGLAND,

1868.

The following information is thought to be of
consequence to those interested in the Salmon
Fisheries of the United Kingdom.

The Conservators of the Fishery Boards in
the various districts of England are for the most part
well aware of the defects of the law regarding the
Preservation of Salmon, but there are many who,
although they have a great interest in the question,
do not sufficiently understand the present position in
which their river properties stand, and it is, therefore,
with a view of showing these matters in their true
light that the following reliable information is
now circulated.

In 1860 a Royal Commission "of inquiry into the
Salmon Fisheries of England and Wales was issued
with the view of increasing the supply of a valuable

O SALMON FISHERIES

article of food, for the benefit of the public, #c. On
the 7th of February, 1861, the Commission issued
their Report, containing 545 pages of evidence, with
a Report of 35 pages, from which we copy the
extracts.

In 1861 a Bill was introduced into Parliament, based
upon the recommendations contained in the Report
of the Royal Commission.

This Bill had been prepared with the intention of
superseding all the provisions of the existing Acts, by
combining their requisite and useful provisions, in
one general Act. It proposed to repeal upwards of
twenty of these ancient salmon fishery Acts.

The new Bill in its progress through Parliament
was divested of many of its most useful provisions,
which the ancient statutes had also previously
contained.

Owing to these changes in the Bill, the result was
found to be that these ancient Statutes were most
improvidently repealed by the Salmon Fishery Act of
1861, and no corresponding enactments were substi-
tuted. Experience now proves that the laws at
present in force do not supply adequate means for
enforcing a free passage for the salmon to their
spawning beds ; the previous Acts did this.

The following are a few of the repealed Statutes : —

Excepting Magna Charta 1224.

The Act of 1350, " New Weirs shall be pulled
down and not repaired."

The Act of 1369, "The penalty of him that setteth
up or enhanceth Weirs, One Hundred Marks to the
King."

The Act of 1399, A confirmation of former Statutes
touching the pulling down of Weirs.

The Act of 1402, " Commissions shall be awarded
to Justices to enquire of Weirs, Kidels, &c."

OF ENGLAND. 7

The Act of 1472, for taking away Weirs and Fish
Garths.

The Act of 1531, for the pulling down of Piles
and Fish Garthes in the Rivers Ouse and Humber.

The Act of 1558, for the Preservation of Spawn
and Fry of Fish.

The Act of 1714, " For the better preservation of
salmon (in the seventeen rivers referred to in the
annexed table; be it farther enacted that if any person
shall lay or draw any kind of nets, engines, or other
devices, or wilfully do or cause anything to be done
whereby the spawn or fry of salmon, not being in
length eighteen inches from the eye to the middle of
the tail, shall be killed; OR SHALL hereafter make,
erect, or set any bank, dam, hedge, or stank, net or
nets, across the said rivers, whereby the salmon
therein may be taken or hindered from passing or
going up the said rivers to spawn, &c. ; every person
so offending who shall be convicted thereof shall
forfeit the sum of £5 for every such offence, besides
the fish taken, and the nets and engines used, or shall
be committed to prison for three months, and the
justices shall order such nets, engines, and devices
made use of, to be seized and cut in pieces or de-
stroyed in his presence, and shall also cause such
banks, dams, hedges, or stanks, made or erected
across the said river, to be demolished and removed
at the charges of such offenders."

It is therefore evident how much importance
the public, in former days, attached to a systematic
protection of a nutritious and valuable article of
commerce, and cheap food for the people, produced
without cost from the public, by our English Salmon
Rivers. The follow ing return of the loss of spawning
area of the seventeen rivers mentioned in the Act of
1714 will shew the damage which has been going on
during the last 100 years or thereabouts.

SALMON FISHERIES

U3§

p- o

ai

N O

OO Ca

OO^J •>-» Ca •<»

Ml

M
I O

O en

ON
00

to
O
Ox

Cn O
O O

O N O

W M ON

O ON

o o

oo -^

00 O

o o

3 3 n>

I"-3 5-'

OF ENGLAND. 9

From the foregoing table the extent of injury to
the seventeen rivers named in the Statute of 1714
may be easily calculated. It will be seen that of
the 18,247 square miles formerly available for
Salmon, being the area of Catchment Basin, there
are now only 6,607 square miles left accessible
for the fish, a large portion of which being nearer the
mouths of the rivers than at their upper waters, is
not fitted for breeding purposes ; there is therefore
only about one-third of the area left that existed
about one hundred years ago, whereas 11,640 square
miles have been destroyed or rendered nearly un-
productive by weirs and pollutions.

The consequence of this great loss of spawning
ground to the fish has become very apparent, and,
whereas the Salmon Fisheries of Ireland were re-
ported by the Commissioners many years ago to
produce " £300,000 a-year and more," and they are
now estimated at a value of £330,00). It is very
improbable that the Salmon Fisheries of England and
Wales are worth £30,000 a-year, although the quantity
of water naturally available for Salmon in England is
far greater than in Ireland. There are seventy-three
mill weirs on the Severn, the rental of the water power
of which, as compared with steam power, we may
estimate at from £40 to £50 each, or say £3,650 a
year — and to produce this amount of power the sal-
mon have been excluded from 324 miles of streams.
The money value of Salmon produced from the re-
maining streams (of 344 miles) we may estimate, by
Mr. Miller's Report, at from £6,000 to £7,000 a year ;
but if all the former breeding grounds had remained
accessible to Salmon over an area of 4,400 square
miles, it is possible that the gross produce of
the Severn might have been similar to the rivers
at Waterford, the income of which, as stated by
Mr. Ffennell, is £40,000 a-year, — from an area
of 3,400 square miles, or to the gross produce

IO

SALMON FISHERIES

of the River Tay, which exceeds £30,000 a-
year, from an area of 2,200 square miles, with a
fishery rental of £17,618 a-year.

The following areas of English salmon rivers have
been taken from the Commissioners' Report.

Total.
English rivers, area square miles

Deducting the following rivers destroyed by
Weirs and pollutions.

Thames, area

Mersey

Aire and Calder

Don and Went

Deducting all rivers between the Humber and
the Medway, being too stagnant, and some con-
verted iuto sluices and canals, are unproductive.

Ancholrne — Lincolnshire

Ladd and Withern

Steeping .,

Witham . .

Welland ..

Nene

Ouse, Wash — Cambridgeshire

Yare, Wareney — Norfolk

Blythe

Aide

Deben

Orwell

Stowe — Harwich

Colne — Esse?

Braine— Maldon

Crouch — Essex

The above area . .

Add Asglesea and small rivers polluted aad^iot "I

accessible to salmpn, say
Deduct

Area of English ca\aa0;a rivers ..
Area of Irish rivers, «quare miles

English excess of area

J

• •

55080

Square

Miles.

5162

1706

802

721

8391

408

65

102

1052

707

1055

2894

872

71

127

159

257

420

200

420

150

8959

8391

17350

3000

20350

20350

M

34730

••

22947

, .

11783

OF ENGLAND. 1 1

The foregoing; calculations, shewing the area of the
Catchment Basin of the salmon rivers of Ireland
are taken from the evidence of Mr. Ffennell
in the Report of the Select Committee of the
House of Lords on the rivers of Scotland, July, 1860.

Miles.

The area of the salmon rivers of Ireland ... .. 22947

Taken from the Commissioners' Report of 1861 (at page
438, see Maps), the area of all the rivers in England
and Wales, is found to be .. .. 55080

From these deduct the rivers not adapted for
salmon, between the Humber and the Medway, and
those destroyed by pollutions, the Thames, Mersey,
Aire, Calder, &c., &c. See particulars .. 20350

Which leaves the area of salmon rivers in England and

Wales in square miles at .. .. .. 34730

Or an excess of area as compared with the rivers of

Ireland of .. .. .. .. 11783

The 22,947 miles in Ireland produce about £330,000
in money value of salmon annually, or at the rate of
£14 16s. 3d. per square mile.

At the same rate of produce the 34,730 square miles
of rivers in England should produce £514,000,
whereas we find that these 34,730 square miles do
not produce more than £30,000 annually in money
value, or 17s. 3|d. per square mile.

The facts above stated are taken from the printed
Reports and Evidence of Fishery Commissioners.

We can scarcely be surprised that our ancestors
for 500 years should have passed such stringent laws
for the protection of salmon as an article of food,
when we see the loss this country has sustained.

At the time the Act of 1714 was passed,
Parliament required that the navigation of our rivers
should not be intercepted by mill weirs, and that the
salmon should also have a free passage to their
spawning grounds — the only motive powers then in
use being by windmills and water wheels.

About the end of the last century, steam power

I 2 SALMON FISHERIES

was discovered, and has gradually superseded water
power, which in consequence by comparison has be-
come so far depreciated that at the present time un-
appropriated waterfalls are of little or no value, owing
to the great expense of erecting wheels, goits, dams,
etc., and the loss sustained by the great irregularity
in the supply of water, when compared with that ob-
tained by the use of a steam engine ; so that however
valuable water power may have been in the last cen-
tury, steam power has become much more valuable
and available as a substitute in our day. We think
it could be shown that some of our salmon rivers
would now be more valuable by the substitution of
steam and their restoration to the original purposes
of the salmon fisheries.

We may here make a comparison between two ad-
joining rivers : — the Wye has no weirs upon it and
has an area of about 600 square miles of salmon
breeding ground. The Teme has an area of 625
square miles from which the salmon are shut out by
twenty- four mill weirs, the water power of which may
be taken at £50 each, or £1,200 a-year. There is no
doubt that the salmon from the Wye is of double the
value as a fishery, when compared with the rents
of the water power on the Teme.

The strongest evidence we have on record to prove
the value of our salmon rivers is to be found in the
stringent character of the ancient statutes for their
protection. The water of many of these rivers is as
pure at the present time as it was centuries ago, and
would no doubt become equally valuable in the pro-
duction of food, if cultivated, assuming that these
obstructions could be removed or abated by the sub-
stitution of steam, or by the erection of proper fish
passes over them, with some equable division of the
water, by allowing the salmon to have it during the
night and the millers during the day.

OF ENGLAND. 13

The value of a salmon fishery depends upon the
extent of its breeding ground. The three rivers at
Waterford contain an area of 3,400 square miles, and
have at least a produce of salmon, amounting to
£40,000 a-year, whereas the Severn has an area of
4,437 square miles, but with seventy-three weirs, and
the produce may be taken at about one-sixth part of
that amount.

The Report of the Special Commissioners, Ireland,
1865, states that 11,333 men are employed in the
salmon fisheries ; the gross amount of Licence duties
amounted to £6,722 16s. 8d. They say, " In salmon
fisheries protection produces fish, and fish provide the
money wherewith protection may be purchased."

The Licence duties on the Shannon, with an area
of 4,544 square miles, amounted so £1,531 10s. Od.
In the Waterford district, with an area of 3,400
square miles, they produced £1,158.

The Weirs on the Thames have done more to-
wards exterminating the Salmon in that river than
even the pollutions of London, inasmuch as theTyne,
although fearfully polluted at Newcastle and BELOW,
is clear of Weirs and obstructions ABOVE, and is
therefore one of our best English Salmon Rivers.

The Thames Navigation Act, 1 866, prohibits, under
a heavy penalty, directly or indirectly, the opening into
the River Thames, or into any watercourses within three
miles communicating with it, any new sewage or any
other offensive or injurious matter into the Thames ;
and as to such channels as before the passing of the Act
had conveyed sewage or other deleterious matter into
the Thames — that if after a sufficiently long notice,
which might be further extended by the Board of
Trade, the flow of all deleterious matters were not
stopped, those through whose neglect it happened
should be guilty of a misdemeanor, and liable to a

14 SALMON FISHERIES

penalty of £100, and of £50 for every day during
which such offence was continued.

The provisions of this Act appear to be very
wholesome, and it is desirable they should be applied
in all similar enactments and extended to the whole
country, and the enforcement of them be committed
to proper persons to secure the object in view — that
of cleansing our streams and making them wholesome,
with as little injury to the manufacturers and as
little expense to the cities and towns adjoining the
rivers, as may be practicable.

I have selected the Thames as the worst case on
record : with an area of 5,162 square miles, when
compared with the Tay, the Spey, or Waterford, it
should produce salmon worth £50,000 a-year. The
sewage is now carried into the sea, and the pollutions
in the upper streams suppressed. If all the weirs
could be abolished, and steam power substituted for
water power, and the navigation converted into a
canal, then these artificial weirs or cesspools for filth
would be removed, and the water would flow in its
pure state to London, and the metropolis would have
an abundant supply of water from its own river, and
save some of the enormous outlay of £8,600,000 in
bringing water from the sources of the Severn. We
doubt if any one would estimate the cost of substitu-
ting steam power in place of the milling power, and
altering the navigation to a canal, at an annual charge
of £344,000 a-year, the interest at four per cent, on
£8,600,000 ; and London would then possess an un-
limited supply of pure water from the Thames — with
some salmon in addition.

In order to explain the condition of the Thames, I
have made a few extracts from the Report of the
Commissioners on the Prevention of Pollutions of
Rivers on the state of the Thames, 1866. " The
waters of the River Thames rise in the Cotswold

OF ENGLAND. 15

Hills, in the Bath oolite and lias series ; the head
spring is 340 feet above the ordnance datum ; the
perennial flow of the Thames is spring water. Some
portion of the bed and banks are muddy ; but by far
the greater length of the river's banks, and bed, is
gravel, rock, clay, and marl. The length from the
source to the estuary is 201 miles ; the area is about
5,162 miles, of which, the area, above Hampton,
there is 3,676 square miles. The Thames' main
stream has 61 mills upon it, and upon fourteen other
tributaries, 299 mills. It is now navigable from the
estuary nominally to Lechlade, but practically not
beyond Oxford. Many of the weirs and locks are old
and in a ruinous condition, from decay and neglect.
The rude and antiquated mode of working the navi-
gation by ' flashes/ still prevails, and is highly inju-
rious. Some of the weirs retain a head of water, so
as to prevent land-drainage, and permanently to
waterlog large areas of agricultural land on both
margins of the river. At Oxford the suburbs and
even urban portions of the city are at times seriously,
and as regards the health of the inhabitants, danger-
ously, flooded by reason of the impediments offered
to the free flow of the flood water, by Sandford and
other weirs, etc."

The area above Oxford appears to be about 600
square miles, and is about fifty miles above Hampton,
"with a population of 71,520, having three towns
with a population of 2,000 and over." " Whereas
above the point at which the pumps are placed at
Hampton, there is a population of 900,000, within an
area of 3,676 square miles, and eighty-nine towns with
a population of over 2,000 each."

" The weirs above Oxford are very similar to the
rymer locks, fixed with movable tackle, called flash-
boards, overfalls, and ground gates ; in times of flood
the whole apparatus can be removed."

1 6 SALMON FISHERIES

" The water impounded at a weir may be used for
navigation, irrigation, fisheries, mills, water supply.
These various river interests, at least the important
ones, may be reconciled under a good system of river
economy."

" Weirs immediately cause land flooding."

The Commissioners say, — "Matters have much
changed since the first mill was built on the banks of
the Thames. Water power, formerly so precious, is
now scarcely more than an auxiliary to steam. Trade
has quitted the river for the railway. Every year the
laud adjoining to a mill gains in value, and it is now
easy for a man to do injury to lands, to the amount
of several times its own value."

" What we should suggest with respect to weirs is,
that the property in all the weirs on the Thames, now
vested in private owners, and the liability to maintain
the same weirs, should be .transferred to the body
which has the government of the river." Above
Oxford : — " The water is pounded at a weir in one of
the upper reaches, above Oxford, and then let down
by opening the weirs, and is passed from reach to
reach, the barges riding on the crest of the wave ;
without these flashes the navigation cannot be con-
ducted even below Oxford." The Commissioners by
their bye-laws prescribe that there shall be two such
flashes per week. " The system of flashes is a mere
makeshift."

" Floods occur every year. Thousands of acres of
land, with many roads and footpaths, vast areas of
urban lands, and even streets, have been for several
weeks under water, lands have been destroyed, local
traffic interrupted, and human health lowered."

"Above Oxford the navigation works are in utter
decay ; the channel is unnavigable, and traffic may be
said to have ceased. Below Oxford the navigation is
still maintained, but only by the pernicious makeshift

OF ENGLAND. 17

of flashes. The pound locks are out of repair and
ineffectual. The 'Commissioners are unable to im-
prove the existing state of the navigation. As a body
they are insolvent. They have a bonded debt
amounting to £88,400, upon the security of their
tolls, and no interest has been paid for several years."

" Whether the navigation of the Upper Thames, or
any part of it, can ever be made profitable, as a com-
mercial undertaking, is a question on which we would
express no opinion. If the navigation is to live
against the competition of railways, it will only be
after it has been placed in thorough good repair and
working order," etc., etc. " That traffic should un-
der such a system exist upon the river, in the face of
railway competition, is a thing utterly impossible,"
etc., etc., i.e., under present arrangements.

The above extracts are taken from the Commission-
ers' Report, and shew the present state of the Thames
navigation. These mill dams are the receptacles for
all the refuse and filth that passes down the river, and
over which the water supplied to London has to flow,
and in consequence becomes polluted.

If the navigation and the milling power could be
purchased, and the latter converted into steam power,
the river water would then flow along its natural bed
and be kept pure by constant sereation ; thousands
of acres of land that now are covered by floods during
the winter season would be left dry, and promote the
health of the population, and valuable crops sometimes
destroyed by the summer floods, would be saved.

This principle is not only applicable to the Thames
but to the weirs and many mill dams all over the
Kingdom, which are most serious hindrances to the
effective drainage of our main valleys, and are most
detrimental both to their agricultural value and to
the health of the people who inhabit them.

If this obj set could not be effected on the lower

1 8 SALMON FISHERIES

Thames, it might be restricted to the district above
Oxford, with an area of about 600 square miles,
which we will assume would produce as much pure
water as would supply the wants of London within a
third of the distance of the proposed supply fr< »m the
sources of the Severn, and at a probable saving of
millions of outlay, and would create a salmon fishery
on the Thames without inflicting an injury on the
Severn salmon fisheries.

The Metropolis would thus be supplied from the
sources of its own river : on the contrary, if it was
thought desirable to retain the mill weirs on the lower
Thames, there are only 61 dams on the main river,
between Oxford and London, and by adopting Mr.
FfennelPs calculation, fish passes might be placed
over these for £60 each, making an outlay of £3,660,
and thereby enable the salmon to go to Oxford and
the upper Thames streams beyond, so soon as the
upper part of the river was relieved of its ruinous
navigation, and enable them to spawn in streams ex-
tending over an area of 600 square miles — an extent
of breeding ground nearly equal to that of the Wye.
One very important question still remains to be
considered. I allude to such rivers as still possess
some salmon, but where they have been, so nearly,
destroyed by having been shut out from their natural
spawning ground for fifty years by impassable weirs,
that the quantity has become so far diminished that
the licence duties are perfectly inadequate both to
protect the fish and to construct passes for them over
the weirs — no fish and no funds — such, for instance,
as the Humber and its tributaries, with an area of
9,661 square miles, of which area not more than
2,200 square miles, on the Ouse, the Trent, and
Derwent, are accessible to the salmon, with a still
greater limit to their breeding ground, and of which
there are many similar cases, but to a smaller extent,

OF ENGLAND. 1 9

in many other rivers where the water remains as pure as
it was centuries ago. The Government having abolished
the old laws, the difficulty has been increased of apply-
ing a remedy to such rivers where the salmon have been
unlawfully exterminated. If Government would
advance money, to be applied in the construction of
fish passes, and to be repaid out of licence duties
during the ensuing twenty-five years, some of these
rivers might be restored. Or if power were given to
Boards of Conservators to levy a rate not exceeding
ten per cent, upon the rated value of every fishery,
this might in many cases enable them to raise funds,
or borrow money upon the security of the rate —
similar to that of the River Tay, or follow the ex-
ample of America, "where all persons who build
dams on streams annually frequented by fish, do so
under an obligation to keep up sufficient fish ways for
the passage of such fish, unless they are relieved by a
special act of the legislature."

In conclusion, I believe the general opinion of
those most interested in the welfare of the salmon
fisheries in the United Kingdom is to be summed up
under the heads of the three following requirements.

Free passage of the salmon to their natural spawn-
ing grounds, to be paid for by Government, they
having repealed the Acts giving this right, with ten
hours' supply of water out of twenty -four, and to
allow no fishing with nets within 100 yards of the
mill dams.

All minor details, as to nets and close time, to be
arranged under the supervision of the Home Office,
if recommended by the several Boards of Conservators,
under the control, after a public enquiry, and with
the advice of the Inspectors.

The main object the promoters of Salmon Preser-
vation had in view in 1861 was to prevent the extinc-
tion of the salmon. In repealing the ancient laws

2O SALMON FISHERIES

they wished to remodel and consolidate them in one
Act and substitute a more easy mode of procedure for
enforcing them.

It now appears, however, that, although great
general benefit has arisen to the Salmon Fisheries of
England by the clearing away of innumerable fixed
engines in the tideway, and by an improved system
of protection to Salmon, neither the Actof 1861 nor the
amended Actof 1865, as they now stand, give sufficient
authority for enforcing a free passage of fish to their
natural breeding grounds in the upper streams where
alone they can be safely bred, and that the Act of 1861
in repealing that portion of the old Acts, which
enforced a free passage for the fish, an unfortunate
mistake arose, which it is necessary to remedy as
quickly as possible, in order that our English Salmon
Fisheries may be fully developed.

A very moderate supply of water, if properly
arranged, will enable fish to run over mill dams,
but where the miller has built too large a mill
for the size of the river and takes the WHOLE of
the water down his mill race, it is impossible that the
best system of Fish Ladder or Pass ever invented can
be of much use, so long as the Fish have no water
to get access to it or to pass over the fishway.

It will be seen therefore how very desirable it is
that a more efficient Act than that of 1865 should be
passed, and it is hoped that all persons in the United
Kingdom interested in the preservation and protection
of the Salmon species will lend their assistance by
every means in their power to obtain from Parlia-
ment improved legislation.

The various Boards of Conservators are already
engaged in reporting to the Inspectors of Fisheries
the alterations required in order to carry out more
efficiently the Acts of 1861 and 1865. And inas-
much as it has been proved in Ireland that different

OF ENGLAND, 21

rivers cannot always be controlled by the same gen-
eral rule, there can be little doubt that gjreat improve-
ments may be made by modifying the law in various
localities according to the natural capabilities of the
rivers of the United Kingdom, which have now been
for the first time carefully inquired into and reported
upon by the Royal Commissioners and Inspectors of
Fisheries.

On the Severn the Commissioners inform us that
the area is 4,437 square miles, and Mr. Alexander
Miller informs us that there are 668 miles of streams
with seventy- three mill weirs.

These seventy-three owners of mills we will assume
obstruct a tenth part of the bed of the river by means
of weirs placed across the stream, all of which to a
greater or less degree exclude the salmon from their
spawning ground, and destroy it by converting it
into deep pools ; and whilst obstructing the river for
water power destroy their own salmon fishery as well
as that of nine-tenths of the other proprietors of the
river, who have no interest in the mills, and whose
salmon fisheries in these rivers were protected for
upwards of five centuries, until 1861. Thus at
least nine-tenths of the salmon fishery proprietors
of the Kingdom were sacrificed for the benefit
of the other tenth, viz. the mill owning proprietors,
and the nation lost food worth nearly half a million
a-year when compared with the produce of Scotch
and Irish rivers, of which the Commissioners say ; —
" They are not superior in natural capabilities to
England and Wales, and at the present moment far
more productive." It is estimated that a sum of
.£2,000 would make the seventy-three mill weirs on
the river Severn passable to salmon, and would prob-
ably yield an increased return of food to the country
from these 4437 square miles of at least £40,000 a-year,
to the mutual benefit of both the owners of mills who
c 2

22 SALMON FISHERIES

are fishery owners, and proprietors of river fisheries
who are not mill owners.

As there are but three parties interested in this
question, we will endeavour to explain their relative
positions, as they naturally occur.

1st. The ancient riparian proprietors of the banks
and bed of the river, whom we will call the salmon
fishery proprietors.

2nd. The mill owning proprietors, who have con-
trary to statutes built weirs across the rivers — for their
own private benefit.

3rd. The public, who have been deprived of valua-
ble and nutritious food.

We will first deal with the ancient salmon fishery
proprietors. The Act of 1 865 has destroyed all fixed
engines in our estuaries, on the principle that it was
a transference of the property of the river proprietors
to those on the sea coast, and this, with the power of
protecting the salmon in the accessible portions of the
upper waters, has greatly improved the produce
of the fisheries. But if the Legislature considered
it necessary to abolish these unlawful destructive en-
gines, in order to improve our fisheries, how much
more important is it now to remove or at least render
less mischievous by making fish passes over the most
destructive engine that was ever invented, which has
destroyed the property of the ancient fishery proprie-
tors as well as of the public.

The mill owning proprietors for many years have
built these walls across our salmon rivers, contrary to
statute law. They do not occupy the tenth part of
the length of our rivers, and have destroyed the
property of the fishery proprietors and the public food
to the amount of (by comparison with the Irish rivers)
half-a-million of pounds a year. This food can only
be restored by allowing the salmon to resort to the
upper waters, where alone they can be safely bred.

OF ENGLAND. 23

It has been supposed that the water power used in
manufactures of this couutry was of much greater
importance than the fisheries. I have endeavoured
to collect reliable information upon the extent and
value of all the water power in the United Kingdom,
by comparison with steam power, and the only infor-
mation I have met with has been from the Factory
Inspectors Report, 1862, from which I have taken the
following extracts : —

SALMON FISHERIES

Summary of Cotton Factories in the United King-
dom, see p. 65, total Cotton mills ..
Summary of Woollen, p. 78, United Kingdom

Worsted, p. 103,

Flax, England and Wales, p. 110

Flax, Scotland, p. 110

Flax, Ireland, p. 110

Silk, in the United Kingdom, p. 129..

Hemp in England, p. 138 ..

Hemp in Scotland, p. 138 ..

Jute in England, p. 188 ..

Jute in Scotland, p. 138 ..

Jute in Ireland, p. 138

All the Cotton mills in the United King-
dom are included in the 12,467 horse-power,
but there are in Lancaster, York, Chester,
and Derby, cotton, woollen, worsted, flax, and
silk mills, in districts in which the waters are
polluted and destroyed as salmon rivers, over
an area of 9,500 square miles, and these I
have deducted from the Factory Inspectors
Summary : —

Cotton .. 8633
Woollen .. 3265
Worsted .. 1455
Flax .. 365

Silk 374

Also all the water power used in Scotland,
as follows : —

Cotton .. 3766

Woollen .. 2292

Worsted .. 176

Flax .. 1800

Jute .. 60

And also in Ireland . —

Cotton

Woollen

Worsted

Flax
Silk

290

529

82

2384
60

Leaving the amount of water power in Eng-
land and Wales used in manufactures, upon
unpolluted or salmon producing rivers, at

Horse
Power

in
Water.

14092

7294

3345

3886

28617

Indicated
Horse power.

Steam. Water.

281663

26879

26234

8505

12512

10710

6186

39

88

62

1736
245

374869

12467

9598

19:0

976

994

2384

864

0

0

0

60
0

28617

OF ENGLAND.

Waterpower upon salmon rivers used for manufactur-
ing purposes

Adding to the above three corn mills for every other
kind of mill, excluding all mills in Lancaster, York, Derby
and Chester, and all mills between the Humber nnd the
Medway. over an area of 8,604 square miles as unproduc-
tive of salmon .. .. ..

Estimated total amount of water power used upon
salmon rivers in England and Wales in horse power ..

Horse
Power in
Water.

3886

11658

15544

The water power for milling and manufacturing
purposes appears to be 28,617 horse power, or seven
per cent, when compared with the steam power at
374,869 horse power, or 93 per cent, of the whole ;
and the total quantity of water power used upon
salmon rivers may be estimated at 15,544 horse
power. Many of the mills do not exceed six or ten
horse power each, on small streams. A few may be
taken at twenty horse power and upwards each ; if
we take them to average twenty horse power each, we
get 777 weirs, or at twelve horse power each we get
1,295 weirs. I will estimate the larger number, that
is, 1,295. Of these weirs one-half may be taken at
four feet in height and under, and these could easily
be made passable to salmon ; the remaining half, or
647 weirs, I will estimate at the maximum rate of
£60 each, according to Mr. FfennelFs calculation ;
thus, 647 at £60 each would amount to £38,820, say
£40,000 as the expense of making fish passes over all
the weirs upon salmon rivers, extending over an area
of 34,730 square miles, in England and Wales.

It appears from the Fishery Commisioners' maps
of all the rivers in England and Wales, that there are

Rivers with an area of 20 to 100 square miles
100 to 300 ,,

300 to 600 „

600 to 1000 ,,

1000 to 5000

Total

154

32

15

5

12

218

26 SALMON FISHERIES

We will assume the fish passes are to be made at the
expense of the riparian proprietors of the rivers, or
by their Boards of Conservators, with a provision that
when so made, every fish pass shall have a supply of
the whole water of the river to run through such
passes for ten hours of each night, say from 7 o'clock
in the evening to 5 o'clock next morning. There
may be a few cases in which the mill owner has
worked his mill both day and night, and in such cases
where the miller can prove that he has done so for
the previous five years, that the conservators shall
compensate him for any loss that he may sustain be-
yond the fourteen hours, for the water power that he
may be deprived of during any portion of the year,
and during which it may be required by the salmon
passes. Under these circumstances the mill owner
would sustain no injury. The fishery proprietors
having incurred this expense, it would only be
reasonable that their water bailiffs should be allowed
to traverse the banks of the rivers for the purpose of
protecting the salmon during the spawning season.

The few mills that work both night and day absorb
all the water that the river may produce, and it is
obvious that a fish pass of the best construction
would be of no avail in such instances. Having thus
provided a ten hours' supply during the night over
the fish passes, and that no fish shall be caught within
a hundred yards of any weir, and that the water
bailiffs shall have the power to traverse the banks of.
every river in order to protect the fish, otherwise the
efforts of the conservators would be defeated. Salmon
is a migratory animal that can only be bred in the
upper streams of a river ; they are fed in the sea,
and if you exclude them from a river, or exclude
them from the sea, they may soon become extinct.

These two I consider indispensible requisites for
the restoration of our fisheries, and until they are con-

OF ENGLAND. 27

ceded the public, who have been deprived of a vast
amount of valuable food and saleable property, can
never expect to see it restored.

The question as to the effect of ordinary sewage
from a town 1 contend is not so destructive to fish as
is generally conceived, as wherever acquatic insects
are bred in, and washed out of the sewers into a river
of any magnitude, vast quantities of fish may be seen
hovering around the mouths of the sewers, and evi-
dently feeding upon this insect food washed into a
river, but there are, no doubt, cases where the quan-
tity of sewage may become a perfect nuisance when
cast into streams too insignificant to carry it away.
On the Avon, at Bath, the greatest number of ang-
lers are to be seen within 50 yards of the mouths of
these sewers.

The most deadly pollutions are gas tar, lime, lead
washings, and poisonous matters, all of which should
be excluded from every river, as they are from the
Thames, under the Navigation Act, 1806. And it
would be most advisable for Governments in the first
instance, without waiting any further report from
the Commissioners of Pollutions, to adopt their sug-
gestion that all chemical matter should be confiued
to filtering; pits, when a large portion of the refuse
could be lecovered in a useful farm.

The bag and stake nets and other fixed engines
have been justly abolished. In the instructions
contained in Her Majesty's Commission of the
31st July, 1860, it is stated to be " a Commis-
sion of inquiry into the Salmon fisheries of
England and Wales, with a view of increasing the
supply of a valuable article of food for the benefit
of the people."

With these instructions the Commissioners pro-
ceeded to investigate the condition of all the salmon
rivers in the Kingdom, and printed the result of

28 SALMON FISHERIES

their investigation upon 545 pages/ with a Report
appended to the same of 36 pages, and it is from the
latter Report that we have copied a few extracts, in
order to show how inefficiently the Fishery Act of 1861
carried out their recommendations and intentions.

From the reliable information we have before us it
will be clearly seen that the value of our fisheries has
been so much damaged by the various mill dams all
over the country, that some remedy is absolutely
necessary to prevent the annihilation of salmon alto-
gether. For example, nothing would be more
just than some enactment to compel millers —
most of whom have gained their rights at the expense
of the public interest — to give up part of the water
now used in milling for the purpose of enabling a
passage to be made for fish, and this may be done
either by securing au alternate use of the water by
day and night, or in some equable manner apportion-
ing the water for some days in each week, so as to
combine both interests without seriously injuring
either.

The object therefore of the present Statement is to
enable all Members of Parliament and others con-
nected with the Salmon Fisheries to have a correct
insight into the actual requirements of the public right
to enforce the cultivation, protection, and natural
capabilities of the various rivers for producing a
valuable supply of food, and to shew the unfairness
of enactments which allow the public interest at Iaro-e
to be severely damaged for the benefit of a few indi-
viduals.

APPENDIX.

Extracts from the Reports of the Commissioners appointed to enquire
into the Salmon Fisheries of England and Wales.

I.

* * * * In spite of the disadvantages which now attach to
them these large rivers with their unobstructed estuary are well
worthy of attention and if a free passage were opened through them
the fisheries would be of great value.

Viewing, then, the rivers in England and Wales as a whole, and
setting aside those waters which have been poisoned by mines, or
greatly contaminated by the pollutions arising 'from manufactures,
there remains still a vast area possessing great natural advantages
for the production of salmon. The rivers of England and Wales
exceed in extent those of either Scotland or Ireland, which supply
great quantities of salmon, and yield a large revenue. They embrace
a full average proportion of water well suited for the breeding of fish,
with rapid streams, and deep pools, and the upper parts contain
good gravelly spawning beds. They thus possess every requisite for
increasing the supply of a valuable commodity, were not the bounty
of nature frustrated by the perverseness or negligence of man.

It had been alleged in certain petitions presented to Parliament
shortly before the issuing of this Commission, that the supply of
salmon from the rivers and fisheries of England and Wales had of
late years considerably diminished. We made it our first object to
ascertain in the several localities we visited, how far such an allega-
tion is founded on fact. We regret to state that it has been fully
substantiated by the evidence.

In some rivers the fact is patent and notorious. Salmon formerly
abounded, but have now almost or altogether ceased to exist. These
are the cases in which mines or manufactures have poisoned the
waters or obstructions have been erected, by which the fish have been
blocked out from the breeding grounds.

The instances of extinction are but few ; those of diminution, in a
greater or less degree, exist in every river that we visited.

D

3<D APPENDIX.

These facts were generally attested by living witnesses speaking
from their own experience, particularly by fishermen and others who
had good opportunities of observation. The decrease of fish is in
most cases stated to have been very great ; in some rivers the present
supply is described as not being more than 1 in 10, 1 in 20, or even
1 in 100 compared with what the witnesses personally recollect.
There might be some ground to suspect exaggeration in these state-
ments, although they were almost universal, were they not sup-
ported by other evidence of a very cogent nature. It was proved for
example : —

1. That the price of the fish had greatly increased.

2. That the rents paid for fisheries had much diminished.

3. That the numbers of persons and boats employed in the
fisheries had fallen off.

Lastly. It was shown by the evidence of authentic records and
documents that the number and weight of fish actually taken
in former times were much greater than at present.
We need scarcely observe that such a result is extremely unsatis-
factory, above all, when it is remembered that it has taken place in
the face of a large increase of price and a greatly extended market.
If a fishery was let for ,^400 a-year, when salmon was commonly
sold on the spot at 4d. a lb., what should be said of a rental which
has dwindled down to ^10 or even £5, while the fish has increased
threefold or fourfold in price, and the tenant has direct access to the
largest markets in the kingdom ? It is obvious that the produce of
such fisheries must have decreased in even a greater ratio than their
rental.

In regard to this species of property, we feel called upon to notice
a circumstance with which we were much impressed — that, generally
speaking, much apathy and indifference prevailed on the part of the
proprietors respecting it. In most cases the owners of private
fisheries appear to take little pains either to protect their rights or to
increase their rentals. No doubt the depressed condition and falling
value of this kind of property have had a discouraging effect on their
minds. But probably they have been in a still greater degree de-
terred from making exertions or incurring expense in protection or
improvement by the difficulties which, in the present state of th
law, oppose themselves to any concerted attempt to ameliorate the
fisheries.

It is certainly not attributable to any defects in the elements of
yalue. The sources of wealth exist to a greater extent unimpaired,
but their development is checked by artificial causes ; chiefly by the
want of the facilities which proper legislation might give for combined
action among those whose interests urgently require it.

The contrast presented by the values of some of the private
fisheries in Scotland and Ireland, when compared with those of this
part of the kingdom, is very striking. It was stated by the late
Duke of Richmond to a committee of the House of Commons in

APPENDIX. 3 1

1850 that the clear profit of his fishery on the river Spey had
amounted in the preceeding year to £12,460. The Duke of Beau-
fort possesses a right of fishing about 20 miles in extent on the lower
part of the Wye, a river which in regard to its natural capabilities
may be regarded as second only to the Severn. The rental which
his Grace receives for the fishery is only £l2Q per annum. This is
a striking, bnt by no means a solitary case of extreme depression.

The conclusion as to the decline of the salmon fisheries, to which
the evidence and records above referred to have led us, was irresisti-
bly confirmed by what we ourselves witnessed in the course of our
inspection. We had opportunities of seeing those causes in full
operation to which the destruction of the fish was generally abscribed,
and we have no hesitation in declaring that in the face of the im-
pediments and barriers, and other destructive agencies, which exist on.
all the rivers, it is impossible that any other result than a great de-
terioration of the fisheries could have taken place ; iudeed, it is in.
some cases a matter of surprise, not that the supply should have
greatly fallen off, but that the breed should not have been totally
extinguished.

Of all the evils that affect the fisheries artificial obstructions must
beyond all question be regarded as the most pernicious. It is obvious
that to exclude the fish from entering the rivers at all is a surer way
of destroying the breed than even the most deadly mode of making
war upon them when they are there. Moreover it is certain that
these barriers to the passage of the fish, even if they do not absolutely
«hut them out, offer great facility and encouragement to the unfair
means employed for destroying them.

In many parts of England and Wales we found weirs and dams
extending across the whole breadth of the rivers, presenting from
their height and construction great obstacles to the ascent of the fish,
in some cases absolutely impassable in any state of the water, inmost
others insurmountable except in time of fresh or flood. In very few
instances had any mode of passage for the ascending fish been pro-
vided in the shape of stairs or ladders, and in no instance were such
conveniences properly constructed.

Of the rivers in which this evil exists to the greatest extent we
may specify the Ouse, Wharfe, Eure, Derwent, and others in York-
shire, in which salmon formerly existed in good quantity, and which
are well adapted by nature to produce them, but from which they are
now all but totally excluded. We may instance also the Severn, Dee,
Tyne, Lune, Derwent in Cumberland, Tawe, Torridge, Avon (Hamp-
shire), and Test.

II.

Of the lamentable destruction of animal life and waste of human
food which is caused by the stoppage or detention of the fish by
these barriers, no one who is at all acquainted with the habits of the

32 APPENDIX.

salmon will need to be informed. The instinct by which these fish
are impelled at a certain season of the year to make their way from
the sea for the purpose of depositing their spawn, the early breeding
fish ascending to the higher parts of the stream, the later fish in suc-
cession sowing the lower portions with their seed, so that in the
natural state of things the whole course of a river so far as it affords
suitable spawning ground, becomes stocked with the ova, is one of
the most beautiful arrangements of nature, but it is effectually
thwarted by these obstructive contrivances of man. Meantime the
spawning beds in the upper parts of the stream are left unstocked,
and the proprietors and inhabitants above are robbed of their due
share of what should be the common property.

We could scarcely express in too strong terms our conviction
that the existence of these obstructions in the rivers, unprovided
with any means for enabling the fish to get up to spawn, is a cause
fully adequate, even if no other existed, to account for the gradual
disappearance of the fish, and that if effectual means be not taken to
obviate this evil the gradual extinction of the breed of salmon in the
rivers thus circumstanced must in no long time be anticipated.

A reference to the old and fundamental principles of the statutes
relating to fisheries will show how decidedly the law of England frcm
a time anterior to the oldest of these erections has set itself against
any attempt to create fishing monopolies by obstructing the free run
of salmon throughout the rivers, and how it strove, in spite of inces-
sant attempts to defeat its injunctions, to give effect to the natural
law of distribution, by which the occupants from source to sea are
entitled to their fair share of the produce of the waters.

It clearly appears, therefore, that from very early times down to
the present reign, it has been the constant aim of the Legislature,
however thwarted by the negligence or cupidity of individuals, to
insure a free passage to the salmon ascending and descending the
rivers in obedience to their natural instinct, and to remove all artifi-
cial obstructions to their so doing. But, besides these statutory
prohibitions, it is clearly laid down by the best authorities that the
erection of weirs in a public river so as to injure and obstruct the
passage of fish is a public nuisance at common law, and that no
length of time will legitimate the continuance of such an obstruction.

It remains for us to specify the measures which, in our opinion,
are needed to remedy the evils now prevailing, and to restore the
fisheries to that state of productiveness which their natural capabili-
ties admit of. Some of those remedies are indeed obvious, and with
regard to most of them there is not much difficulty in suggesting the
steps which ought to be taken, provided the practical difficulties
which may arise in adopting them can be overcome. We trust that
the impression of the existing evils, and of the obligation of re-
medying them, may be so strong as to indue a vigorous effort on the
part of the Legislature to carry through, in the interest of the public,
those statutory measures on which the well-being, and indeed the
existence of the salmon fisheries of England and Wales depend.

APPENDIX. 37

structed ; but as no two weirs are similar, the form of the ladder will
require to be varied according to circumstances. The entrance to
the ladder should always commence from some favourite pool at the
foot of the weir, where the fish resort in the greatest numbers, and
the ladder so curved as to bring the mouth of it over the pool, and
the flood waters so controlled by dam boards as not to inundate the
ladder and thus cast the fish back,

May 21st, 1867.

CULTIVATION

SALMON FISHERY,

ADDRESSED TO THE PRESIDENT AND COUNCIL OF

THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS, TO PROMOTE

THE CULTIVATION OF FISHERIES, HELD

AT ARCACHON, 1866.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

THE salmon fisheries of Great Britain are naturally
very prolific ; but it is not until a recent period that
science has been devoted to this subject, or has led
to important practical results or discoveries, in de-
veloping the natural history and habits of the valu-
able fish — the salmon.

The inhabitants of the waters afford vast quanti-
ties of wholesome and nutritious food to the public,
and by the study of salmon cultivation in our rivers
and streams, useful renovations have been made, both
in legislation and culture, the results of which — both
to the owners of salmon fisheries and to the general
public — are now beginning to demonstrate themselves
throughout Great Britain.

4O INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

Where salmon place their eggs they may be seen
and protected, or destroyed, whereas sea fish carry on
their operations far beyond the care or knowledge of
man.

The salmon is a migratory fish, ever on the move ;
some of them must have travelled hundreds and others
thousands of miles during their lifetime, between
their feeding and breeding grounds, and it is only by
the steady application of science and actual practice
that we have discovered what little we now know.
Any one who thinks he is going to understand the
subject without labour will find himself mistaken,
since many clever men who have been engaged all
their lives in salmon fisheries have been compelled to
acknowledge their great, ignorance. The person who
wishes to succeed will find that he must labour dili-
gently and carefully ; that he must not despair after
repeated failures, but quietly work on, in spite of op-
position, till he obtains the fruit of his labours. One
thing is perfectly clear — unless the young salmon are
bred, and the parents protected from their enemies,
there can by no possibility be any quantity of salmon,
for the same reason that if there are no lambs there
can be no sheep.

There are many persons in the kingdom who de-
rive their living by the capture of salmon, and who
exist by the sale of this produce, yet these know or
care very little about the way or means by which
their WATER-FARM is sustained and supplied with a
stock offish.

Let us, therefore, ascertain something of the natural
history and habits of the salmon, and study the vari-
ous operations requisite for its cultivation, both by the
natural process, and by artificial means, and try to
discover its enemies, many of which are numerous,
and of the most destructive- character, as I shall pre-
sently explain.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 4!

The salmon is both a river and sea fish, returning
to the stream in which it was bred, like the swallow
to her own nest, the bee to its hive, or the pigeon to
its dovecot; it belongs to its own particular river by
the laws of Nature; it is a migratory, gregarious, and
pairing creature;* it is bred in small streams suitable
to its growth up to a certain period of its existence,
but which would be insufficient to afford it food in n
more advanced state, but which it must revisit to
breed. From these small streams the young proceed
in shoals down to their feeding-ground, and by in-
stinct return in due time to the spawning-place. And
hence the collective assembly scatters itself and forms
into pairs, the gregarious instinct beind overcome by
the pairing impulse. At the mouths of rivers enter-
ing the sea, we see them move about in separate shoals.
After being hatched in separate rivulets, the fry pass
down to the ocean, and return in DISTINCT BANDS
each to its respective stream; for there is abundance
of evidence that every river has a salmon peculiar in
the shape and appearance to itself.

The sea fisheries of the United Kingdom have
always supplied a much larger quantity of food to the
population than the salmon fisheries ; and it is grati-
fying to find from the report (1866) of the English
Commissioners of the sea fisheries, that this supply
has of late years greatly increased. The construc-
tion of railways and steamboats has afforded the
means of speedy transit to this perishable article, yet
the supply has kept pace with the demand. The
ocean, out of her vast resources, can afford, we trust,
a continuous increase without becoming exhausted,
and this to an extent we possess no means of esti-
mating. This increasing supply is owing to the de-
velopment of enterprise — the invention of more skil-
ful appliances for the capture of fish; and the dis-

* I have abundance of facts to prove all these three words.

42 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

covery of new grounds and fishing-banks, not pre-
viously known to exist, in the bottom of the sea.

The Commissioners state that London alone con-
sumes 80,000 tons of sea-fish, not estimating salmon,
herrings, sprats, eels, crabs and lobsters, oysters,
mussels, and shrimps ; this in the aggregate greatly
exceeds in weight the consumption of beef in Lori-
pon. They further state, " The most frequented fish-
ing grounds are much more prolific of food than the
same extent of the richest land. Once in the year,
an acre of good land, carefully tilled, produces a ton
of corn; or two or three hundred pounds' weight of
meat, or cheese; the same area at the bottom of the
sea, on the best fishing-grounds, yields a greater
weight of food to the persevering fisherman every
week in the year."

" Five vessels, in a single night's fishing, brought
in 17 tons of fish, an amount equal in weight to 50
cattle or 300 sheep. The ground which these ves-
sels covered, during the night's fishing, could not
have exceeded an area of 50 acres."

If we estimate the annual profit of 50 acres of the
best land at £'2 per acre, that is £100, and compare
this with a single night's fishing of five vessels, pro-
ducing 17 tons offish, at £1 a ton, say £1 19, we may
form some idea of the wonderful powers of produc-
tion of a " fish farm" at the bottom of the sea, which,
without any expensive tillage, produces more food in
one night than a similar area of the best cultivated
land in an entire year.

I am not aware that any accurate calculation has
been formed of the annual value of the British fish-
eries. It is nearly certain there is yet a vast extent
of fishing-ground undiscovered at the bottom of the
sea, and of its extent it is impossible to form any ac-
curate estimate.

The fishing-grounds of the deep sea, as well as the

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 43

rivers, are subject to constant fluctuations in their
productive powers, arising among other reasons from
the fact that one class of fish depends for food upon
the breeding capabilities of others. It may be as-
sumed that whenever the enemies of one race eat up
and destroy the excessive numbers of another, the
supply of those so destroyed will be diminished there-
by, until particular localities become so denuded, that
the fish disappear for a time, or until reproduced in
the course of nature. This we know to be the case
in some streams that have become salmon rivers, in
which there had been previously an excessive quan-
tity of trout. As the trout spawn a few weeks before
the salmon, we may assume the salmon, in the con-
struction of nests for hatching their young, have
grubbed up the trout beds, and deposited their own
in the same locality. Be that as it may, in a few
years these trout streams have been converted into
salmon streams.

This occurred a few years ago in the tributaries of
the " Clare" Galway river, and this may be considered
a fair illustration of what is probably constantly tak-
ing place elsewhere.

Since fish live upon fish food, their powers of re-
producing their species are wisely ordained to be such
as to keep up the balance of nature.

I will now mention what I consider a proof that
the race of salmon do not escape from nature's law of
destruction. My friend, Mr. R. Buist, of Perth, and
myself, in the year 1852, ascertained from a statistical
account of the salmon produced from the River Tay
— one of the chief salmon fisheries in Scotland — the
following remarkable conclusion : —

Estimating the annual migration of fish up and
down the river — adopting a fair standard as to the
number of breeding fish, and the quantity of ova an-
nually deposited in the beds of these streams in pro-

44 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

portion to the number actually caught* — the result of
our labours was most interesting; namely, that out of
every thousand eggs deposited by the parent fish (over a period
of sixteen years), not more than one fish was afterwards
caught and converted into human food.

Hence arose the question, what had become of the
999 eggs out of every 1,000 from which no fish had
ever come to the nets ? Some eggs, doubtless, had
never been fecundated, and these would be unpro-
ductive ; many others had mo>t likely been devoured
in an embryo state by aquatic insects, as well as by
trout, and other fish ; others had been hatched, and
in their infantile and helpless condition, consumed by
all classes of their natural enemies near to their birth-
place ; some others, when more grown, had again
supplied food to trout and other fish ; whilst millions
had migrated annually to the sea, and become deli-
cious food to more revenous monsters of the deep,
leaving one solitary fish, out of every 1,000 ova de-
posited, for the food of man.

How was this to be remedied ? After carefully
considering where the greatest destruction took place
(which we suppose to be on the spawning-ground),
and how this could be obviated, it appeared to Mr.
Buist and myself that the best mode of meeting the
difficulty would be to collect the ova from the parent
fish, hatch them artificially in boxes, and retain them
in ponds till they were prepared for migration to the
sea, and then to liberate them. This mode of culti-
vation has now been put in practice at Stormontfield,
near the town of Perth, Scotland, since the year 1852
with great success, and the details have been pub-
lished.

From the instances adduced, the question arises,

* Of this an accurate account had been kept under a Navigation
Act — this being the only means by which so much accuracy could
have been attained, as the fish were classified as grilse, i.e., salmon
on its first return to a river, and salmon.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 45

By what means nations may effectively convert un-
productive rivers into the means for supplying the
largest quantity of valuable food to their public ?

As a river fish, we may consider salmon by far the
most valuable and the most important to cultivate.

We will suppose the salmon to reside half its life in
salt water, and half in fresh ; it is obvious that we
know but little of its sojourn in the sea, except that it
becomes fat and flourishing after going down in a
very exhausted and impoverished condition, unfit for
human food, distressed and tormented by parasites
which attach themselves to its body, and of which it
quickly rids itself in the salt water, where it no doubt
finds abundance of food in the offspring of other fish ;*
in fact, we may conceive vast basins in the bed of the
sea overflowing with Crustacea and the fry of coarse
fish, a salmon-food as rich and palatable to the hungry
salmon as the finest basins of turtle soup would be to
a hungry man. And with this food it may gorge it-
self, and increase from the size of two ounces to five,
six, or eight pounds in a few months ; in fact, its
growth has been occasionally found after it has been
in the sea a few months,f to be sixty times its pre-
vious weight, whereas in the rivers its chief food con-
sists of insects and their larvse, as well as loach and
small eels.

After having renovated itself, it becomes the prey
of other enemies, but ultimately, in obedience to the
promptings of its migratory iustinct, it returns back
to the fresh water, and again to the river where it
reproduces its species.

* The late Professor Quekett believed the food of the salmon to
be the ova of the Echinus or Sea Urchin, as he always found this ia
their stomachs. Herrings are also occasionally found in their
stomachs.

f It has been proved that some smolts remain in the sea one year
and upwards, and that some do not remain in the sea longer than a
few months,
it 2

46 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

A few days ago, a salmon of 69 £ Ibs. was sold in
London for £12 : 3s. 3d., being 550 times larger than
it was on its first migration to the sea. A question
may arise as to this fish's age. I have tried by vari-
ous means to ascertain the ages of salmon, but, thus
far, unsuccessfully. Probably at eight years of age,
it might be 20 Ibs., and since its birth it may have
made twenty migrations to the sea, and travelled
thousands of miles. This is one of the instances of
the growth of the salmon, and of the value of the fish
when full grown.

Salmon, unlike our domestic animals, which have
to be carefully fed and sheltered for some years at a
great cost, requires no maternal care to rear or feed it,
but returns with the greatest regularity to its birth-
place. Those fish which are caught at Rotterdam,
and have travelled twenty times to the falls of the
Rhine, will have journeyed 14,000 miles in twenty
years ; and this vast distance we may suppose it
would accomplish with as much ease as a swallow
would fly the same space, since fish, by their specific
gravity, swim in the water as easily as birds fly in
the air.

In short, the natural history and habits of the sal-
mon evince such marvellous instincts, that those who
practically study the subject for a lifetime appear to
know but little about it; its time of breeding, return
to arid from the sea, appear to be fixed with as great
precision as if they had been regulated by the dates
of an almanack.

SPAWNING GROUNDS. 47

CHAPTER II.

SPAWNING GROUNDS,

In rivers, say of 300 miles long, not more than
half the distance may be suitable for the deposit of
spawn, yet the fish spread their operations with won-
derful uniformity over every eligible position in large
streams, as well as over every stream that may be ac-
cessible to them ; the smaller fish resort to the upper-
most and smallest streams, whilst the larger ones
select the deeper portions, but they get into the
smallest and most elevated streams in which they can
swim and find shelter. The small streams are found,
in area, to be the MOST productive— even those not
exceeding from three to six feet in width, with pure
water and gravel beds. Many of these in the sum-
mer seasons are not more than a few inches deep,
with occasional pools, and in many places are over-
hung by brushwood, or banks of earth and stones.,
under which the young fish escape readily from sight,
and into which larger fish do not go, as there is not
sufficient water to cover them. Here the young fish,
being beyond the reach of their more formidable ene-
mies, who devour them when they can, remain in
safety till they are about three inches Jong. A» they
increase in size, they follow the stream into deeper
pools, and thence migrate to the sea, I know one
stream divided into two tributaries of not more than
from three to six feet in width, with springs at the
head of it. This is a favourite resort for spawning
fish ; they will swim into this small stream with their
backs frequently above the water, and where a boy

48 SPAWNING GROUNDS.

with a stick might kill them with the greatest ease ;
and yet, when disturbed in their operations of spawn-
ing, they can only be driven away for a few minutes
when they will return to the same gravel bed to com-
plete their work. It may be readily conceived to be
of the utmost importance that these fish should not
be disturbed, chased away, or killed, as the ova de-
posed by them in SHALLOW streams we find to be
the most productive, and the young fish the best pro-
tected from the depredations of other larger ones until
they are about six months old.

Any one who has ever seen an annual migration
of thousands of smolts to the sea, and who then con-
siders how comparatively few of these ever return as
full-grown salmon, must riot be surprised at this when
we know that they become the food of other fish at
every stage of their existence, both in the sea and
river.

Constantly pursuing a perilous, vagabond life, an-
nually travelling from the sea to the sources of river*
elevated hundreds of feet, in order to get to their
natural breeding-ground, they come in contact with
every imaginable enemy, difficulty, and obstruction,
of which I shall speak hereafter.

Facts have proved that the largest fish are caught
in the largest rivers, yet salmon resort to very small
ones — the Furbagh river, in Galway, is only a few
feet in width, and has a Queen's gap of three feet
wide through its weir, yet with a lake near to the
river's source, it is frequented by salmon.

The larger the volume of water, the larger are the
pools and the shelter and sustenance to large fish, and
they therefore probably live to a greater age than they
otherwise would in a smaller stream. There are ex-
ceptions however to this rule. I am acquainted with
a river, from thirty to forty miles in length, in which
the fish do not average more than 6 Ibs. in weight,

SPAWNING GROUNDS. 49

whilst in others, very similar, the fish are often 9 Ibs.
each; in this latter case we may suppose the ocean
and the river afford them a supply of better food in
greater abundance.

We may assume that the food in the ocean may
be greater in some or less in other seas. The food in
the rivers varies. Some rivers drain a peaty, poor
soil, in which the fish from its infancy is stinted, and
consequently its growth is checked. Other rivers
drain rich soils, abounding in insect life ; hence in
these the fish from their infancy are abundantly sup-
plied with food, and the smolts are larger when they
migrate to the sea than those born in rivers which
drain a poor soil, just as a mountain sheep is smaller
than another reared upon a rich lowland pasture.*

As to the quality of the water, this, I have no doubt,
varies in different rivers, from the nature of the soil
and bed of the river over which the waters flow into
the sea ; as the some fish return from the sea to the
river of which they are natives. It is also known that
salmon traverse along the shores of the sea beyond
their own river's mouth, for distances of 40 or 50
miles, and pass and repass the mouths of other rivers,
and yet return to their own native river to breed ; for
example, there are three or four salmon rivers flow
into the Frith of Moray, in Scotland, in one bay ;
they all associate and live together for some months
in the sea, until the period arrives for their return,
when each class of fish returns to its own river, as
they are well known to the fishermen who catch
them, from there being distinguishing features in the
shape of each class of fish known to inhabit these dif-

* The late Duke of Atholl, in March, 1859, caught three salmon,
on their way to the sea, weighing 10, llf, and 12$ Ibs. each ; these
same fish having been marked by the Duke by a copper band round
their tails, returned in six months, and were again captured, having
increased to 17, 18, and 19 Ibs. each. They went to the sea as lean
kelts, and had become fat from the quantity of food they had found.

5O SPAWNING GROUNDS.

ferent rivers. This is one of the laws of nature which,
if it were otherwise, too many fish might go into one
river, and leave others deficient of stock, whilst we
know they distribute themselves with marvellous uni-
formity over every portion of every river, to the ex-
tent of its breeding capabilities, and where new
breeding-ground has been added, by the removal of
natural or artificial obstructions, the salmon extends
its operations to the extent of these new streams, and
soon occupies every available portion of every river
that is accessible.

REQUISITES OF A SALMON FISHERY. 5 I

CHAPTER III.

REQUISITES OF A SALMON FISHERY,

My object being to point out the indispensable
requisites that constitute a prolific and well-conducted
salmon fishery, I shall now enter into the natural
history of the salmon. In the first place, we may
assume that no river can be productive of a large
quantity of fish, unless it possess an adequate extent
of accessible and suitable breeding ground. Salmon
can only be bred in fresh water, and it is in the small
streams or upon shallow gravel beds that they can be
the most successfully hatched and reared, and also in
clear rippling currents, free from mud and pollutions
of every kind. This is evinced in the natural in-
stincts of the parent fish, which always induces it to
select such places. The sluggish portions of a deep
river with mud banks, are therefore of no value for
breeding purposes — if the ova should be deposited in
such places it would soon become enveloped in mud,
would be unproductive, or the young fry when
hatched would die from the want of rippling aerated
and pure water. The next requisite is an adequate
stock of breeding fish to occupy the spawning-ground,
every yard of which should be fully sowed with ova.
If the number of parent fish should be insufficient to
accomplish this object, just in the same proportion
will the future catch fall off, and the profits be de-
ficient. The young fish must be produced in great
abundance, after which it is easy to devise the means
of catching them when adults, and in dry seasons it
is not difficult to destroy too many, to the injury of

52 REQUISITES OF A

future years. To prevent any excessive destruction,
the law in Ireland has wisely provided that no net
shall be placed or fixed across any river, but that it
shall be put in and drawn out upon the same side of
the river, thereby allowing an adequate stock to es-
cape up the stream ; that no stake, nets, bag nets, or
"fixed engines," fixed or fastened in any way, shall
be used, and that every salmon weir shall have a
Queen's " gap "* or opening always open of one-tenth
the width of the river, in order that a stock of fish
may pass up sufficient for reproduction. Asa further
precaution, the period during which it is illegal to
catch salmon is fixed at not less than 168 days in
each year, with some exception to anglers with a rod
and line.

After having provided what may be deemed an
adequate stock of breeding fish, the next important
thing is to provide money to pay water bailiffs, to
watch and protect the fish after they leave the sea,
and ascend to the small streams to deposit their
spawn. To effect this object, a licence duty is im-
posed upon all nets and rods used for capturing fish,
and this duty on the Shannon, in Ireland, produced
last year j£l,3l3, and upon other rivers smaller
amounts.

In addition to this sum, upon f< several " (that is
" exclusive ") fisheries, some of the proprietors also
expend voluntarily large sums, for the purpose of in-
creasing the protection. We have one instance at
Ballina, in which the proprietor lays out .£1,000 a
year, in addition to the licence duties, in protecting
the breeding fish from being killed by poachers whilst
on the spawning -beds ; upon my own fishery about a
hundred men are so employed, at a great cost.

Penalties are imposed upon any man who is found

* A free pass for the fish — which by law is open at all seasons.

SALMON FISHERY. 53

catching, chasing, or disturbing the salmon, or in
cases where a salmon, or part of a salmon, is found in
his possession during the 168 days of the close or
protecting salmon. I need not say that the protection
of a fishery in the breeding season requires great
vigilance, and can only be conducted at a great ex-
pense ; but where this is done efficiently, and the
fish are allowed to deposit their eggs undisturbed, it
is found that their powers of reproduction are so
great, as to amply repay all expenses.

Similar protection is given to the salmon in the
breeding season upon the Scotch fisheries, the funds
for which are raised from the proprietors, according
to the annual value or the rent of each fishery.

In Ireland the law enables proprietors of fisheries
to erect salmon ladders over mill weirs and natural
obstructions, by means of which the fish are enabled
to ascend the upper streams, where alone they can
safely deposit their spawn, thereby' increasing the
productive powers by extending the area of the breed-
ing-ground. No doubt the sea can fatten the fish,
but it is indispensable they should first be bred, as
the quantity to be caught entirely depends upon the
quantity that has been bred, and that again depends
upon the extent of breeding ground, with ample pro-
tection for the fish in the breeding season.

As a similar code of laws is now in force in France,
there can be no doubt of the good results that will
arise if they should be effectively administered, as
without such laws any fishery property would become
comparatively valueless, and the public would soon
be deprived of a large supply of valuable and nutri-
trious food.

54 UNPRODUCTIVENESS OF STREAMS-

CHAPTER IV.
REASONS FOR THE UNPRODUCTIVENESS OF CERTAIN STREAMS,

An allusion has been made to the value of fishing
ground in the deep sea, as compared with a similar
area of the best cultivated land ; I may also say that
the bed of a river of a well cultivated salmon fishery,
is found to be relatively a vast deal more valuable
than a similar area of the best cultivated soil on the
banks of any river ; at the same time, doubtless,
there are districts in the ocean, and in the rivers,
from their physical construction, as unproductive as
we find districts of unproductive land. This same
principle is alike applicable to some now unproductive
rivers, which must EVER remain unproductive from
their physical construction. But we have many
rivers in Ireland that are unproductive, NOT from
any physical defect in their salmon-producing powers,
but from another cause — viz., the great number of
proprietors, which precludes the possibility of their
agreeing to adopt any practicable system of cultiva-
tion involving the outlay of capital in the removal of
natural and artificial obstructions, waterfalls, and
mill weirs ; in the requisite expense for protection to
the fish, and in the subsequent division of the produce
or annual income to be derived from such rivers. I
have no doubt this is the case in other countries.

In order to remedy this difficulty it has been pro-
posed that the right to cultivate and kill the fish
in such rivers should be consolidated, and be con-
verted into what we denominate a " several or exelu-
sive fishery ;" that is, placed in the hands of one or

UNPRODUCTIVENESS OF STREAMS. 55

more owners, and the annual income be opportioned
relatively to each proprietor. By this means that
which is now a barren, unproductive waste would be
converted into the means of producing a vast amount
of valuable and nutritious food for public use, to the
extent, in Ireland alone, of probably £100,000
annually, in which country the cultivated salmon
fisheries now yield, in money value, about ,£330,000
annually.

Many of the rivers to which I have alluded as un-
productive, possess some salmon at present, and in
others where this is not the case they could easily be
stocked from adjoining rivers. As an instance of the
possibility of doing this, we have the river at Doo-
hulla, not more than ten feet in width, but having
several tributaries, upon which a quantity of salmon
ova had been deposited and hatched artificially ; the
fish so produced migrated to the sea, and afterwards
returned to the place of their birth, and were caught
in this small stream with lakes upon it, although they
might have resorted to other much larger contiguous
rivers. As an instance of the importance of protec-
tion to the salmon during the breeding season, and
as an evidence that this principle meets with public
approbation, I need only mention the aggregate
amounts of money raised for this purpose, as stated
in the Commissioners' report. They say: "The
gross amount raised from licence duties for the pro-
tection of the fish in the close season was in 1863,
£5,892 7s. 6d. ; and in 1865, £6,722 16s. 8d., being
an increase of £830 9s. 2d. as compared with the
largest revenue ever previously raised for protection
in Ireland.

I have made some allusion to the largest as well as
the smallest of our salmon-producing rivers, I may
now add a few remarks upon these latter rivers.

It is only when the fish have left their food on the

56 UNPRODUCTIVENESS OF STREAMS.

sea coast and passed through the brackish water, and
arrived, by means of floods, in the upper portions of
the river or lake that they are caught by anglers.
Nature appears to have endowed them with a certain
instinct, which induces them to surmount the greatest
obstructions (short of a mill weir of six feet in per-
pendicular height) in order to get to the mountain
streams that have gravelly beds. For instance, at
Maam river, the fish pass through, for twenty-eight
miles, a lake, in which they do not spawn, to the foot
of a mountain more than 1,000 feet high: in fact,
the summit of this mountain at Glenlusk is marked
1,436 feet above the sea. The source of the river is
a spring, situated near the summit of this mountain,
and, in order to get to this, we see large salmon
struggle, during a flood, through a violent mountain
torrent against a current falling at the rate of 200
feet per mile, and actually depositing their ova at ah
elevation at least of 1,000 feet above the sea ! Such
is the avidity with which they will seek any place
suitable for the purpose of reproduction, and this
instance appears to me one of the strongest proofs
of the absolute necessity of making all rivers accessi-
ble, since we find these Maam streams most prolific,
as they are stocked with young salmon (i.e., parr)
every year. The river itself is too shallow and too
precipitous for the parent fish, or any large fish, to
remain in it, except during these periodical floods,
during which they spawn, and then they retire to the
lake for shelter and return to the sea.

CULTIVATION OF A SALMON RIVER. 57

CHAPTER V.

CULTIVATION OF A SALMON RIVER,

I shall now proceed in my endeavour to describe
what I consider to be requisite for the practical and
successful cultivation of a salmon river, as I only wish
to apply pratical principles to the subject. In the
cultivation of land both skill and capital are indis-
pensable requisites; the soil has to be ploughed and
manured, and the seeds sown and cared for before the
crop can be reaped ; the cattle and sheep must be
watched, protected, and fed with great care, in order
to produce profitable results ; we will consider a river
to be a "fish farm," requiring an analogous treatment
in order to produce similar results, and the question
arises, how is this to be effected ?

Upon the subject of artificially propagating salmon
much has of late years been said and done. I have
tried this system myself for many years, and have
assisted others also, and in consequence much valu-
able information respecting the natural history and
habits of this fish has been obtained; but as to re-
sults we possess no very accurate means of ascertain-
ing their profitable effect, since the young fish can
only be protected and detained in confinement till
their instinct requires that they should be liberated
and allowed to migrate with thousands of others to
the sea, In considering the effect of any practical
amount of artificial propagation of salmon compared
with the natural process adopted by the parent fish
itself, it will be requisite to estimate firstly, the quan-
tity of ova that a given number of adult fish annually

F 2

5o CULTIVATION OF A

caught in any river (where they have free access to
the streams above, from its source to the sea) can, or
may have produced the previous year ; and, secondly,
the number of years required to produce an average
stock offish, varying in weight from 6 Ibs. to 30 Ibs.
each. It is difficult to fix the average weight of fish
caught in various rivers, but the annual number killed
we will take to be 20,000 fish ; experience has enabled
me to arrive at the conclusion that it will require at
least four years to produce marketable salmon
of the average weight. Now we have a migra-
tory creature to deal with, which we may hatch and
protect for a certain number of months, but at the
end of this period it becomes exposed in the river to
the same chances of life as millions of others, in going
to and returning from the sea. Twice it goes to the
sea before, on the average, the fish is fit to be caught ;
therefore, out of the forty-eight months of its life, we
may protect it only for a few months. I shall assume
that the artificial propagation be continued simul-
taneously with the natural process of breeding for
four years ; consequently, if any reliance is to be
placed on artificial propagation it must be fairly tested
by comparison with the natural process during a simi-
lar period of four years ; or at any rate until the result
can be proved by a return of marketable fish from
BOTH processes.

I shall first consider the case of fish artificially
hatched and reared for (say) fifteen months. The
eggs collected from the fish may be fecundated and
incubated artificially in a box, more perfectly and in
greater relative numbers than would be the case in
the bed of a river by the fish themselves ; and by
using spring or filtered water, the destructive insects,
as well as trout and larger fish, may be to a greater
extent excluded during this period of fifteen months.

After the age of fifteen months, when the young

SALMON FISHERY. 59

fish are placed in the river, and go to and return from
the sea (during which time we obtain our relative pro-
portions of marketable fish from both sources), the
question arises from which system have we derived
the largest quantity at the least relative cost, com-
mercially.

The 20,000 fish annually caught may vary in size,
from 6 to 30 Ibs. each. That various fish produce
various numbers of ova, I have no doubt ; as I found
one of 20 Ibs. in weight to contain 26,636 ova, whilst
another of 14 Ibs. only contained 6,890 ova; taking
the largest and smallest, we will assume that 20,000
fish had visited their breeding-ground the previous
year, and that one-half were females, and had pro-
duced 7,000 eggs each ; that is, that 70 millions of
eggs had been left in the rivers annually, and had
produced one marketable fish to every 3,500 ova de-
posited. This large quantity of 70 millions of fish
eggs annually deposited in a river, whose produce of
marketable salmon only amounts to 20,000 fish, ap-
pears to be a very extraordinary estimate, and leads
one to consider what becomes of the surplus, when
we find only one in 3,500 of the eggs, deposited natu-
rally, produces one fish that is ever caught, or be-
comes the food of man.

I shall next compare this with the largest number
of ova that we ever deposited in hatching-troughs in
any one year, viz., 659,000 ; what number of market-
able fish would this number of ova give us, at 3,500
ova to each fish ? The answer would be, by the above
rule, 188 salmon. These at an average weight of
7 Ibs., at Is. per lb., would be worth £65: 16s.

60 THE DESTRUCTION OF

CHAPTER VI.
THE DESTRUCTION OF SALMON OVA,

We should remember in the first place all fish de-
rive their food, and sustain life from the offspring of
other fish and insects ; that salmon eat the eggs of
salmon ; for the most tempting bait the angler can
use to catch a salmon consists of a salmon's roe or
eggs, and that possibly large salmon eat the smaller
fry; that a single trout will devour 600 salmon eggs
for breakfast, and repeat the same constantly, so long
as any are to be found on the spawning ground. In
December, 1852, we caught a trout on the spawning
bed, and squeezed this number, namely, 600, of ova
out of its stomach, and placed them in a separate box,
where many of them came to life. We may suppose
that of the eggs deposited many are not covered with
gravel to a depth sufficient to protect them from trout,
their natural enemies, and other fish ; some are not
fecundated, and become useless ; and salmon and trout
devour both the ova and the young salmon after it
emerges from the ego;, when in a very feeble state, and
that probably millions may be thus destroyed.

Aquatic insects are mostdestructive in many places ;
as an instance of this I may state that we once de-
posited 70,000 salmon ova in a beautifully clear stream
for hatching, and when the time arrived for their
vivifying we found they had been eaten by the em-
bryo of the dragon-fly, and consequently we could not
discover a single fish living, out of the 70,000 ova
deposited ; yet after all the losses which occur we
often see a multitude of smolts (young salmon) go

SALMON OVA. 6 1

down to the sea every spring in April, and of which,
numerically, only a very few ever return as adult fish,
and that, numerous as are their natural enemies in the
rivers, we may suppose they are equally numerous in
the ocean. Seeing this vast destruction of the fish
bred upon a fish farm to supply requisite food for the
same species, what are the remedies to be applied?
Cattle and sheep consume the produce of the earth ;
they are vegetarians, and may be multiplied and in-
creased by the cultivation of the land ; but the fishes
of the sea and rivers provide their own food, they live
by devouring each other, and are fed upon their own
redundant powers of reproduction, which supply the
wants of their race, leaving some only to escape to
perpetuate their species, and out of these man also
takes his share.

According to my friend Mons. Coste's calculations,
a salmon carries 1,000 ova to every pound of her
weight. 1 may here state that in September, 1863,
I obtained the roe or ova of nine salmon from Mr.
Hayllar, Brighton ; these nine fish weighed 1JO| Ibs.
exclusive of the roe, which weighed 1^9^ ounces. I
then enumerated the quantity contained in one ounce
of the ova of each fish, and ascertained the number of
ova to each pound in weight of fish to be only 650,
instead of 1,000. This I give as the result of a care-
ful investigation, but I found a great want of uni-
formity both in the weight of the roe and in the rela-
tive number of ova produced in different fish, as some
produced a greater weight with a less relative num-
ber; from which we may assume that all salmon do
not produce a similar quantity, and that the ova does
not all become matured at the same time. We may
assume that the average number procured fiom these
nine fish may be a fair aporoximation to the general
average, the result being 650 ova per pound in weight ;
one fish contained 1,332 ova to the pound in weight,

62 THE DESTRUCTION OF

while the eight other fish varied from 476 to 599 ova
per pound.

In 1852, Mr. Buist and 1, from the best informa-
tion we then possessed, arrived at the conclusion that
not one e^g out of 1,000 ever became a marketable
fish. In 1861, Mr. Ffennell and I arrived at the opinion
that not one 3,000 ever became a marketable fish.

But very few salmon have been caught and iden-
tified as the produce of the Stormontfield ponds in
ten years, yet a great benefit has been conferred on
the public ; inasmuch as there is no doubt that the
ova have been hatched more safely, and the offspring
better protected for fifteen months than would have
been the case in the river ; and an amount of infor-
mation as to the natural history and habits of salmon
has been obtained, of which an account has been pub-
lished, 1862, by Mr. W. Brown, of Perth. After a
brief sojourn of fifteen months the young fish go to
the sea, where their enemies are as numerous and
more voracious than even those in the river, as Mr.
Ffennell once saw twenty-six salmon fry taken from
a black pollock ; thus a sea fish worth sixpence in the
market would, at this rate, consume in three months,
at twenty-six per day, upwards of 2,000 young sal-
mon, which, if they could have returned to the river,
and been caught, would have been worth £500.*

Man is another great enemy, not so much from the
number he destroys, as from his intercepting the as-
cent of the fish to its breeding-grounds, thereby an-

* The enemies of the salmon are, according to Mr. Frank Buck-
land's list, as follows : — To the eggs — floods, droughts, frost, mud
brought down by the stream, trout, water shrimp, and beetles. To
the young fish — trout, other fish, larvae of dragon-fly, water beetles,
especially dytiscus, ducks and many other water birds, and rats. To the
adult fish— porpoises, cormorants, hakes, black pollack, seals, fishing
frog, Lophiuspiscatorius, or otter. The greatest enemy of all is man,
'viz., poachers, who kill the parent fish at spawning time, and by
erectiug weirs across the streams, and thereby while preventing them
getting to their spawning ground, destroy their power of reproduction.

SALMON OVA. 63

nihilating the whole race by mill weirs, navigation
weirs, dams, dykes, and fixed engines. These natural
as well as artificial obstructions may be removed or
overcome by ladders, yet it requires skill, capital, and
time to develop and cultivate the productive powers
of any river ; but it is indispensable that the breeding-
grounds should be made accessible to the salmon from
its sources to the sea.

We have no means of destroying the natural ene-
mies of the salmon in the sea, but in the fresh water
we can increase the salmon by protection and care, or
we may destroy them by capture. Over the insect
tribe in the rivers we have no control, and even if we
had it would be unwise to interfere with them, as
their larvaB, as well as the insects themselves, are the
principal food of young fish; but we may suppose
that far more of the ova of the genus salmo are de-
stroyed by insects than by all their other enemies put
together.

The trout, the pike, the otter, and fowls are also
very destructive, but the dragon-fly and a vast quan-
tity of other flies drop their eggs during the summer
on the water; these eggs ultimately become the most
deadly foe of the salmon by devouring (in their ad-
vanced stages of development) millions of salmon
ova, assisted by water-beetles and numerous other
insects.

Is it possible to overcome these difficulties by any
other means than by artificial propagation? And if
not by what means are we to procure the requisite
ova, and rear the fish in sufficient quantities for
fifteen months ? If this system cannot be carried
into effect practically and profitably, then we have no
other left but the efficient protection of our rivers by
clearing them of destructive pollutions and affording
a free passage for the fish from the sources of the
rivers to the sea.

64 THE DESTRUCTION OF

In the production of non-migratory river fish, as
trout, the artificial system may be successfully ap-
plied, as has been proved by Mr. Frank Buckland.

Now, with regard to profit ; dealing commercially
with this important natural history question, we must
admit it is one of the greatest magnitude, yet at the
same time, with the facts I have stated before us, who
can say that any quantity of salmon that could be
artificially bred would pay the incidental expenses
attendant upon a fish-breeding establishment, when
we see apparently in the result such insignificant re-
turns of saleable fish ?

The powers of reproduction are so great in salmon,
that in a large stock of parent fish, well protected
from poachers in the breeding season, would appear
to consist the best mode of increasing the quantity ;
unlike cattle, they require no houses, feeding, or care.
But in the breeding season they pass, as I have
stated, into the smallest streams, and can be killed
by the simplest and rudest implements ; and to pre-
vent this, I employ about 100 water bailiffs night and
day to protect them from injury, without which they
would be killed, and their eggs destroyed ; great at-
tention must therefore be paid to the system of
protection.

By this means the money value of a fishery may
be increased. From natural causes, beyond the power
of man to discover, it will be seen that great irregu-
larity occurs in annual returns; but in order to show
this irregularity more fully, I submit a return of
Lord Grey's fishery at Kinfauns, on the River Tay,
near Perth, for fifty years, during which no two years
are similar : —

SALMON OVA.

AN ACCOUNT OF THE FLUCTUATIONS OF LORD GREY'S KIN-
FAUNS SALMON FISHINGS ON THE TAY, 1788 TO 1845.

By ROBERT BUIST.

ANNUAL CAPTURE OF SALMON AND GRILSE.
For a period of 10 years, before the use of stake nets in the estuary.

Year.

Salmon.

Grilse.

Year.

Salmon.

Grilse.

1788

- 5,773 -

1,538

1793 .••

7,866 ...

2,155

1789

... 9,796 ...

1,083

1794 ...

9,924 ...

1,549

1790

... 6,635 -

1,829

'1795 "•

9,392 ...

2,320

1791

... 8,639 ...

1,320

1796 ...

6,285 ."

441

1792

... 15,242 ...

2,206 1797

7,45! ".

2,629

For 10 years after stake nets were placed

in the estuary.

Year.

Salmon.

Grisle.

Year.

Salmon.

Grisle.

1801

... 6,635 -

3, 06 1

1806 ...

4,072 ...

1,242

1802

... 7,037 •••

1,141

1807 ...

5,306 ...

2,209

1803

... 4,208 ...

887

I8o8 ...

3,371 ...

1,132

1804

... 4,051 ...

3,219

1809 ...

3,393 •••

1,072

1805

... 5,458 .-

1,258

1810 ...

3,132 -.

947

For 10 years

after total removal of stake nets.

Year.

Salmon.

Grilse.

Year.

Salmon.

Grisle.

1815

... 8,239 ...

7,674

1820 ...

6,328 ...

10,780

1816

... io,8n

12,746

1821 ...

9,879 ...

6,310

1817

.. 15,056 ...

7,719

1822 ...

6,435 •••

4,638

1818

... 10,080

7,026

1823 ...

4,998 ...

7,3^7

1819

... io,743 -

12,220

1824 ...

. 7,532 ...

10,461

For 10 years with stake nets on the coast,
tion Act

and before the Naviga-

Year.

Salmon.

Grilse.

Year.

Salmon.

Grilse.

1825

... 7,005 ...

12,774

1830 ...

5,828 ...

10,605

1826

... 3,500 ...

7,OOO

1831 ...

3,218 ...

6,836

1827

2,629

6,078

1832 ...

5,292 ...

9,822

1828

... 4,721 ...

12,342

1833 ."

3,672 -.

9,016

1829

... 5,556 ..

7,853

1834 -.

5,960 ...

10,196

For

10 years during

the operations under the

Navigation

Act.

Year.

Salmon.

Grilse. Year.

Salmon.

Grilse.

1836

... 7,668 ...

8,179

1841 ..

7,757 ...

12,398

1837

... 5,352 ...

12,641

1842 ..

7,305 .-

21,153

1838

... 5,523 ...

9,639

1843 -

9,847 -.

n,353

1839

... 7,379 —

6,686

1844 ..

7,772 ...

7,775

1840

... 3,735 -.

9,215

1845 -

4,991 ...

10,269

In order to show the destructive effect of stake nets
(that is, fixed engines) by excessive capture near the
mouth of the river, the quantity of salmon caught in
the river at Kingfauns during the ten years that stake
nets remained was diminished to 46,663 salmon, but
for the ten years after their removal the quantity in-

66

THE DESTRUCTION OF

creased to 90,101 salmon. From this it is evident that
"whenever too large a proportion of the parent fish had been
caught by any means , that the produce of future years had
been diminished."

As a further confirmation of this fact I beg to call
attention to the yearly rental of the fishings on the
Tay from 1828 to 1865. The mode of letting was by
open competition from year to year ; thus we have the
best test of its annual value. The total rental of the
Tay and its tributaries was

In 1828
1829
1830
1831
[832

rental

1834

1836

1837
1838

1839
1840
1841
1842
1843
1844
1845
1846
1847
1848

1849
1850

1851
1852
i853
1854

i8556

1857
1858

1859
1860
1861
1862
1863
1864
1865

£

s. d.

14,574

IO O

14,529

IO O

13,747

8 o

13,874

o o

11,629

0 0

n,577

o o

10,907

IO O

10,856

10 0

IO,2II

IO O

IO,I5O

6 o

10,285

o o

10,498

o o

11,058

o o

10,846

5 °

10,235

15 °

10,512

5 °

10,386

10 0

IO 7C I

I5 °

IO,099

i5 °

H,42I

10 o

J2,057

10 6

10,729

16 o

9,491

II 0

9,530

o o

7,973

5 o

8,7i5

17 6

9.269

6 5

9,977

13 5

10,199

10 4

10,772

o 5

11,487

2 5

12,884

14 o

13,827

10 7

14, 109

i5 7

14,080

12 O

14,232

16 6

16,742

5 2

17,618

o 7

SALMON OVA. 67

In 1828 the annual rental of the fishings was
£14,574 10s. In this year Home Drummond's Act
was passed, which made the net fishing legal up to
14th September, instead of 26th August; thereby
enabling the proprietors to kill an increased number
of parent fish on their way to the spawning beds, the
effect of which we see was gradually to reduce the
rent of 1828 from £14,574 10s. down to 1852, when
the rental was £7,973 5s. The proprietors then be-
gan to get their eyes opened to the injurious effects
of this extension of the fishing season, and agreed
voluntarily to close their fishing on the 26th August
instead of 14th September, (since closed on the 20th
August.)

This year, viz., 1852, the breeding establishment
at Stormontfields was commenced, and — with the
netting season reduced by nineteen days — together
gradually produced a good result.

I do not suppose that any stronger evidence can be
adduced in support of the necessity of not killing too
many of the parent fish, and of adequate protection to
them on their spawning ground.

I have no doubt that fish, like other animals, also
suffer from diseases, as no two seasons are alike pro-
ductive ; vast quantities are seen going to the sea,
yet from some unknown causes we may have a bad
season, and but few be caught. In very dry seasons
they remain in the sea, and about the mouth of the
river, when too many are in consequence caught;
whilst in wet seasons they are more difficult to catch,
and escape into the rivers and lakes. But one thing
is very certain, they must be well looked after and
protected from injury during the breeding season ;
they must have free access to all the small streams,
over mill weirs and obstructions, as unless they are
bred by millions they can never be found in the market
by hundreds.

68 SUCCESS IN

CHAPTER VII.

SUCCESS IN SALMON BREEDING,

Although I was the first to try the experiment of
breeding salmon artificially in the United Kingdom,
and have continued the system to the present time,
yet time and experience have convinced me that the
increase in the produce and value has not arisen from
the adoption of any artificial means of hatching and
rearing the young fish, but in consequence of in-
creased care in the general cultivation of the fishery,
and principally by protecting the parent fish, and by
providing an ample stock of them to reproduce their
species in large quantities, over a period of some
years, and by closing the fishing season on 12th
August, although by law we could continue to kill
them till 31st of that month. This allows a greater
number of parent fish to go up the rivers to breed.
Our season for fishing in 1865 did not exceed about
1 35 days out of 365 in the year, the principal harvest
being only for about forty days, between the months
of March and August.

In 1863 an Act was passed for Ireland, which pro-
hibited for the future the erection of any fixed nets
whatever, and has provided for the construction
within one year of " Queen's gaps," or free passes, in
all fishing weirs across rivers, and enlarging all those
that now exist to not less than one-tenth part of the
width of the river, these to be placed in the deepest
part of the stream, with an uninterrupted free passage
at all times. The same principle has since been ap-
plied to England, thereby to prevent the possibility

SALMON BREEDING. 69

of exterminating too large a proportion of the stock
of breeding fish ; the subject is placed under the care
of the Fishery Commissioners. Water-bailiffs are
appointed to traverse the banks of rivers, to examine
fishing weirs, dams, engines, &c., to enforce the ob-
servance of the annual and weekly close time, by
removing the obstructions and seizing the nets and
engines illegally used ; they are also empowered to
seize foul fish during the annual close time season,
and all fish passes, weirs, and the Queen's gaps must
be open to their inspection. They have the general
powers of the coastguard, and constabulary in Ireland,
and are a most valuable acquisition to all the fisheries
of the country.

G 2

70 SALMON FISHERY LAWS.

CHAPTER VIIL

SALMON FISHERY LAWS,

I now offer a few remarks upon the important re-
sults arising from a judicious system of legislation
for the protection of the salmon, as we have had pe-
riods of great prosperity in our salmon fisheries suc-
ceeded by periods of equal depression, amounting
almost to an extinction of the species (in particular
rivers), which have arisen from mistaken legislation
and other causes to which I wish as briefly as possible
to allude.

It is well known that the salmon can only be bred
in fresh water, in which it passes the first, and some-
times the second year of its existence, after which it
migrates to the sea, in which it may remain only a
few months, or from which it returns the same year,
but occasionally it does not return for two seasons.

Different countries have enacted different laws to
prevent the destruction of salmon during the spawn-
ing season. Scotland may be considered the richest
known salmon-producing country, and at a very early
period it was found requisite to enact laws for the
protection of the salmon fisheries ; it is stated that as
early as the year 1030 a law was passed in Scotland
rendering ' ' the catching of salmon fry and old salmon
during the spawning season punishable." A similar
law was passed in England in 1285. Another in
Scotland, in 1214, was passed to prevent the use of
nets in the middle of the river, and in the reign of
Robert I., in 1318, a severe law was passed forbidding
the erection of permanently fixed engines of any size

SALMON FISHERY LAWS. 71

or form whatsoever whereby the ascent of the fish up
the river or their return to the sea might be ob-
structed. In 1424 (James I.) another Act prohibited
the erection of all cruives and weirs; and in 1457
another Act ordains that no weirs should be set up
that could prevent the migration of salmon to the sea
during the smolt time, under a penalty of £10; and
under James III. it was enacted that all these laws
should remain in force. In 1489, under James IV.,
it was enacted that the sheriffs should be ordered to
destroy all illegal engines; in 1563 a still more
stringent law was enacted, confirming the previous
laws, and inflicting more severe penalties, and subse-
quently another and still more severe law was passed,
under James VI., confirming the above laws, and to
appoint distinguished individuals as conservators over
all the rivers of Scotland, with full powers to inflict
penalties of £200, or to imprison any infringer.
These laws will evince the care our ancestors took of
these noble fish; and so abundant did they become,
that it is related in the " Life of Sir John Sinclair,"
that in July 22nd, 1743, no less than 2,560 salmon
were caught in one haul in the Thurso river. Since
which various other laws have been passed, some of
which have been found in practice detrimental and
others beneficial. In 1814 the Tweed fisheries pro-
duced £20,000 in value, whilst in 1858 it was reduced
to £5,000. In 1818 Lord Grey got £14,000 for his
fishery on the Tay, and in forty years later this was
reduced to £3,000.

In Ireland the Salmon Fishery Act was passed in
1842 ; this consolidated, amended, or repealed about
twen ty-six previous Acts, extending over a period of
376 years, from 1466 to 1842. Further Acts were
passed in 1844, in 1845, in 1848, in 1850, and in
1863.

In England an Act was passed in 1 861, repealing

72 SALMON FISHERY LAWS.

all the ancient Acts, and another in 1865, to amend
and improve the previous Act of Parliament. The
object of these various laws was to protect the parent
salmon in the breeding season, and to prevent an un-
due proportion of adult fish from being caught in the
rivers, thereby to sustain a sufficient stock offish to
reproduce their species and to prevent their becoming
extinct, the details of which I need not explain.

EXAMPLES OF CULTIVATED RIVERS. 73

CHAPTER IX.

EXAMPLES OF CULTIVATED RIVERS,

As my object is to suggest what I consider to be
the most profitable system of cultivating a salmon
river, I shall endeavour to illustrate my views by
stating a few facts as examples : — •

1st. I have stated the example of the Furbogh
River : it is so narrow that a man could easily leap
across it in the summer season, at the place where it
falls into the sea, and yet this has a salmon weir and
cribs upon it for catching fish, with a Queen's gap of
only three feet wide, for the fish freely to pass through
at all times ; but as there is a lake near to the source
of the river, the fish naturally resort to it, and are
bred and caught in considerable quantities even in
this diminutive salmon fishery. Without the protec-
tion which the law affords to the proprietor of the
Furbogh, all the fish might be easily destroyed, and
the public would thereby sustain the loss of so much
food.

2nd. I will allude to another, the Doohulla stream,
of ten feet wide, in which salmon ova has been depos-
ited, the fish artificially bred, they went to the sea,
and have since been caught in considerable numbers.

3rd. The only other example that I will give is the
case of Mr. Edward Cooper, who possessed a river at
Ballisodare, Sligo, at the mouth of which there are
three precipitous cascades or waterfalls, of about 60
feet in height, to the foot of which the salmon resorted
before ladders were made; he erected ladders over
these falls by means of which the fish in one year

74 EXAMPLES OF

found their way to the upper streams and lakes, there
they naturally breed, returned to and from the sea.

These ladders are constructed over the first per-
pendicular rock of thirty feet, the water from which
falls into the tide-way ; the second falls are at Ballo-
sidare corn mills, about twenty feet in height ; the
third is at Callooney. Previously to the construction
of these ladders not a single fish could ever surmount
these falls, but after their construction the salmon
passed up and down them with the greatest ease, and
after eleven years the number of salmon caught has
been stated at ten thousand fish in one year ; area,
260 square miles.

This may be considered as the most successful and
extraordinary example of the beneficial results arising
from the practical cultivation of a salmon river with-
out exception.

Previously this river had been entirely unproduc-
tive, and might have remained so had it not been for
the intelligence and enterprise of a single individual,
who erected ladders and enabled the fish to have un-
interrupted access to their breeding ground, where
alone they could reproduce their species, and without
having recourse to any artificial system for propaga-
ting the ova ; here we see nature accomplished the
whole object so soon as the parent fish were allowed
access to the spawning grounds, and were protected
whilst upon them.

I shall now allude to the finest salmon river in
Europe, the Rhine, the river from which, probably,
the largest numbers of the largest fish are obtained
in the finest condition, and this without the least
protection, care, cultivation, or cost of any kind from
any man. It may be said to be the very best salmon
river in Europe, and is the least cared for or cultiva-
ted. With no destructive pollutions of its waters,
and with no natural or artificial obstruction to inter-

CULTIVATED RIVERS. 75

cept the fish in their free passage up and clown, until
they arrive at the falls of the Rhine at Schaffhausen,
a distance of nearly four hundred miles in length of
the main river, with various tributaries. The natural
instinct of the fish leads it to the uppermost moun-
tain streams, about sixty miles in length, lying be-
tween Basle and Schaffhausen ; the first, 300 miles
from the sea, is a large navigable muddy river, with
deep pools, and so wide that it is impossible to de-
stroy and exterminate the fish by any system of nets
or means of capture that has yet been invented, and,
moreover, it passes through the dominions of various
governments. I do not suppose that for 300 miles
any fish could be caught by lines and baits, and
comparatively but very few are caught by nets, ex-
cept near Rotterdam. The upper portions, supplied
with the purest cool snow water from the Alps, are
inaccessible to salmon, being intercepted by the falls
of the Rhine.

I have previously shown that the. value of a salmon
fishery consists in the extent of the breeding ground,
and in the protection of the parent fish in the breed-
ing season. In the case of the Rhine, the fish are
bred in a country 300 miles from the sea, and caught
in Holland, where the people only invent the most
destructive nets that have ever been conceived of —
800 yards in length, and worked by steamboats all
the year round, and yet a large stock of parent fish
escape, I have no doubt, owing to the great width of
the water, and deep pools.

If such a river belonged to one State, or to one
owner, it is not possible to conceive the extent to
which it might be improved by cultivation.

As the fish resort to the upper streams and above
Basle for the sole purpose of breeding, and when
they are out of season and unfit for human food they
are killed there, as they are in Holland, without re-

76 EXAMPLES OF

striction ; and if it were possible to kill them all the
race would become extinct ; but it is upon this Suisse
breeding ground that the greatest injury is inflicted,
by destroying the parent fish whilst in the act of re-
producing their species in thousands.

Having very briefly and inadequately stated the
position of this magnificent salmon river, the Rhine,
I may take the liberty of suggesting a mode of culti-
vating and improving it. Thus :

1st. No salmon should be caught above Basle ex-
cept in the months of May, June, and July ; and the
fish should be protected from injury by water bailiffs
during the remaining nine months.

2nd. That salmon ladders should be constructed on
one side of the falls at Schaffhauseri, thereby to ena-
ble the fish to ascend to the Lake Constance and its
tributaries, which would increase the extent of the
breeding ground enormously.

3rd. That the fish should be protected from injury
in the breeding streams, and that none should be de-
stroyed above these falls.

This may be said to be a national undertaking, and
it would be no mean object for any nation to accom-
plish, considering that the height of this fall is only
similar to that which has been overcome by the indi-
vidual exertions of one gentleman (Mr. Cooper, at
Ballisodare) over a waterfall of about 60 feet, the falls
at Schaifhausen being from 45 feet to 60 feet in
height.

The Suisse might object to breed fish for the Dutch
to kill ; well, the Dutch might agree to pay to the
Suisse a fourth part of the value of any quantity of
salmon they might kill beyond their present produce,
and their objection would be fairly met, and both
parties would have conferred a mutual benefit upon
each other, and the public would have derived a vastly
increased quantity of valuable and nutritious food
without sustaining any loss.

CULTIVATED RIVERS. 77

This advice is based upon my own experience of
. what I have seen,, and I have no doubt it could be
confirmed by others similarly situated as to the vast
number of eggs naturally deposited, and the innu-
merable shoals of fry produced, and of the smolts
that migrate annually to the sea, if only the fish
were allowed to ascend to their spawning beds and
protected in the breeding season, over this vastly
increased area.

It is well known that one salmon caught in March
is equal in value to three similar fish caught in July
for the market. I consider it is desirable to open the
fishing season early, thereby to catch those in the
finest condition, and to close the season early, thereby
to allow a greater number of breeding fish to escape
when they are of the least value.

I think it is very certain (as the experiments at
Perth have proved) that all the fry do not migrate to
the sea at fifteen months of age, but that some re-
main in the river or in the ponds to the second year,
and that some of the salmon remain in the sea for
two years, and do not return to the river to spawn
every year. I believe that all the salmon we catch
for the first two months every spring are fish that
could not have spawned the previous December, and
although they go up to the rivers and lakes in Feb-
ruary and March, yet they will not spawn until the
ensuing November and December. Yet we have no
proof that these fish continue only to spawn once in
two years. Mr. John Miller says that he has seen
500 to 1,000 salmon caught on the north Esk river
in the first week in February, and that hundreds of
similar fish are also caught in the Tay and the
Shannon that had not spawned the previous Decem-
ber, and that will not spawn until the next
December.

These we may consider to be some of the inscruta-

78 EXAMPLES OF CULTIVATED RIVERS.

ble and secret works of nature, as Tillotson says,
' ' the inscrutable perfections of the works of God."

I congratulate the French Government in having
passed a law to prohibit the import and export of
salmon and trout in the close season, from the 20th
October to the 1st February, as this will materially
support the fishery laws of Great Britain ; and also
in having passed a general law for the protection of
the salmon and trout rivers in France by prohibiting
fishing from the 20th October to the 1st February,
and that no fish shall be caught in rivers whose width
shall not exceed about 20 feet, as they are considered
to be spawning beds, and below which width fish
shall not be caught except with certain implements
under strict regulations, and that ladders are to be
provided by the State to enable the fish to pass up to
their spawning ground.

CONCLUSION. 79

CHAPTER X.
CONCLUSION,

Thus then I have endeavoured to give some idea
of the immense importance of the cultivation of the
waters, and especially of salmon rivers, a subject
which at the present time is so justly attracting the
attention of the Emperor of the French himself, of
philosophers, and of the whole nation of France.

The remarks I have made are not based upon
speculation, but upon long experience and careful
observation, during a series of years. These princi-
ples I have applied to the cultivation of my own fish-
ery, but I do not wish my experience to end there.
I wish to give it to the public in general, not only in
England but to the friends and neighbours of English-
men— the French.

France has many fine rivers which require but the
application of industry, skill, and capital, to render
them productive of food for the great and enlightened
nation which inhabit it ; and I trust the day is not
far distant when the labours of the learned, scientific
men of France, who have taken the study of the
French fisheries under their charge, will be rewarded
by the increase of the supply of food for the people
from its rivers and the vast waters which wash its
shores.

In presenting this essay to the President and
Council of the " Exposition Internationale de Peche
et d' Aquiculture," at Arcachon, I must beg, not only
on my own part, but also on the part of the salmon
cultivators of Great Britain*, to congratulate them on

80 CONCLUSION.

their zeal and industry, to wish them all success in
the noble efforts they are making to promote the
culture of the waters, not only of Prance, but
throughout the civilized world.

N.B. — A Medal with the following inscrip-
tion from the " Societe Scientifique, Exposition
Internationale de Peche et Aquiculture, 1866.
Recompense Monsieur T. Ashworth, eleve de Sau-
mons, memoire sur Pelevage des Saumons."

AMERICAN EIYEE FISHERIES.

THE Commissioners of Fisheries have kindly
presented me with a copy of their Report,
1868, for the States of Maine, New Hamp-
shire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Con-
necticut.

As the Report consists of 50 pages, I regret
that I can only make the following extracts.

The State has made annual grants for the
improvements of their fisheries, arid for
making " fish ways " over the weirs and dams,
and has also provided laws for the protection
of the fish, artificial breeding, and the con-
struction of fish ways by millowners.

The United States have wisely followed
the example of the French Government, for
the improvement of their fisheries, as the fol-
lowing extracts will show : —

COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS.

REPORT,

To His Excellency the Governor and Honorable Council.

The Commissioners of Fisheries, appointed under
chapter 238 of the Acts of 1866, beg leave respect-
fully to present their Second Annual Report.

H 2

82 AMERICAN

The fishways at Lowell and at Lawrence, as had
been hoped, were finished, and the water let on, last
spring ; and thus the Merrimack was once again
opened, after bein^ closed for eighteen years. Al-
though the violent current could not be at once regu-
lated in the long fishway at Lawrence, it is gratifying
to know, thut, notwithstanding this unfavourable cir-
cumstance, salmon passed over this dam, and over
that at Lowell, and were taken early in -June near
Nashua, in New Hampshire. It seems therefore
reasonable that the five years "jubilee" allowed by
law to this river, assisted by artificial breeding, should
make fish abundant therein.

Shad also appeared at Nashua, but it is not certain
that these actually surmounted the Lawrence fishway,
for about five hundred were, by order of the Commis-
sioners, carried above the Lawrence dam ; a difficult
operation, because this fish, like most of those with
loose scales, is extremely tender, and survives neither
confinement nor rough handling. They were taken
with the seine about two miles below the dam; were
at once put into a tank of cold well water, and car-
ried in a wagon to the mill-pond, where the wagon
was backed into the river, and the fish speedily libe-
rated. All attemps to transport them long distances
failed ; but it is yet possible that this might be done
by icing the water till the fish was nearly paralyzed ;
just as a trout laid on moist snow will live for hours,
though it would speedily die if exposed to a warm
sun. In addition to those which were thus artificially
transported, it is probable that a few passed up the
fishway, because fishes resembling shad or alewives
were seen going up. That eels found no difficulty
was quite plain when the water was drawn off, and
the whole floor of the pass was found to be alive with
them, great and small. Like unwelcome guests, they
came many and early, and ready to devour all the
spawn of useful fishes that they could find.

RIVER FISHERIES. 83

New Hampshire has completed the work on this
river, by putting ways on all the important dams
within her borders ; and the experiments there have
fixed the conclusion that " Foster's fishway," des-
cribed and figured in the last Report, is by far the
cheapest, simplest, and most effective of those now
known. It is only where the space is limited that
the box-way, or double stair, like that at Lowell, is
desirable.*

The salmon ova planted last autumn in the Pemige-
wasset, by order of the New Hampshire Commis-
sioners, are thought to have done well, and the young
parrs have been seen this autumn by Dr. William W.
Fletcher, of Concord, who has had this service in
charge, and who has successfully hatched and raised
a number of parrs in a little spring near his house.
Dr. Fletcher is just back from an expedition after
salmon ova to New Brunswick.

As to the great Hadley Falls dam on the Con-
necticut, it is true that the 10,000 dollars actually
voted for restocking rivers and ponds might, in part,
be applied to making a fishway under the plea that
this was among " appliances and structures useful for
the passage ot the fish." But then this sum would
not be enough. In their Report of last year (page 3,)
the Commissioners stated that 10,000 dollars was a
minimum estimate for this fishway ; and subsequent
examinations have tended to raise this estimate to

* On the Susquehanna, at Columbia, Col. James Worrell has
made a fishway by cutting a section forty feet long out of the dam,
down to a level somewhat below that of the water underneath the
dam. Beginning at this, at its lowest point, an inclined plane with
sides (in other words, a trough) is constructed up stream, in and
beyond the thickness of the dam. Through this — what may be
termed reversed — fishway the shad passed last spring in numbers,
and, for the first time in nearly thirty years, were seen fifty miles,
above on this river and the Juniata. The result shows that shad not
only return to their place of birth, but will, when occasion offers,
penetrate beyond it.

84 AMERICAN

12,000 dollars at the lowest, and to 17,000 dollars at
the highest.

These delays, be they right or wrong, on the part
of private corporations, are the more to be regretted,
because the State has shown the utmost activity and
good faith in trying to repair any injuries to fisheries
whether at home or abroad ; and it is proper to add
that on the Merrimack River the companies have
shown a large spirit, and have been ready to go beyony
what the law absolutely required of them.

The law passed at the last session, together with
the progress of the work in hand, have turned the at-
tention of the Commissioners to various plans for re-
stocking our waters by artificial or natural propaga-
tion. As this whole subject, though not new, is cer-
tainly NOVEL to our people, it is well to consider to
what point we have come, here in New England, in
the matter of animal food. We have come, then, to
good beef at 35 cents a pound, poultry at 33 cents,
sea fish at 20 cents, and other things in proportion.
As to game, we have come to grouse, venison, quails,
and ducks, brought 1,200 miles by railroad, and sold
at high prices to people who can afford such delica-
cies. Time was when our country boys could go to
the next brook and catch enough good trout for a
meal ; now one may buy a pound trout if he has got
half a dollar wherewith to pay for it, and he will pro-
bably get a newly spawned fish, speared in its bed,
and which the fish-monger is prepared to prove was
"caught out of the State! " People complain, and
the legislature passes game laws, and nobody pays
any attention to them after they are passed. Why ?
Because we insist on considering wild animals as our
remote forefathers considered them, when men were
scarce and wild animals were plenty. In a new
country the first settlers may properly have, not only
liberty, but in some things license ; license to till land

RIVER FISHERIES. 85

anywhere, to cut wood anywhere, to shoot and trap
game anywhere, to catch fish anywhere and in any
way. All such things are then too plenty. As popu-
lation increases land and wood become PROPERTY,
until, as in Tuscany, the one is cultivated by thesquare
rod, and the other, as in Paris, is sold by the pound.
This is the march of civilization ; but in our march of
civilization we have very thoughtlessly trampled under
foot a most valuable PROPERTY, because of a vague
idea that it was game, and, by immemorial right, be-
longed to anybody and to everybody. And to-day
there is many an honest fellow who might safely be
trusted with untold gold, but who, nevertheless, would
not scruple to steal trout from your brook. This
feeling gets strength from the loose impression that
game, like the Indian, is doomed, and that the last
shad or trout is soon to be caught, — a sort of Dr.
Fear-the-worst theory

Let our people once clearly understand that these
fish and these oysters are real PROPERTY, to be in-
creased and to be raised in value like other property,
and there will be no more difficulty about the rights
of owners.

Laws have hitherto done little to cheek the des-
truction of valuable fishes, and that from the rivalry
of the very men who should support such. If there
was blame, it lay at the door of the weir people, who
took all the young fish. Nearly all agreed, however,
that the fish had diminished in numbers and in size,
but they attributed this failure, with striking unani-
mity, to the Holyoke dam.

The average yearly take of shad in Connecticut is
estimated at 628,500.

The chief elements of the general questions are
these : —

1. At what periods do the salmon, the shad, &c.,
come into, and go out from, our rivers ?

86 AMERICAN

2. When they go out, do they remain near the
river mouth, or do they stand out far into the deep
sea, or do they retreat in a direction parallel with the
coast, to the warmer waters of the South ?

The different classes of fishermen, and the different
modes of fishing, have been considered at some length,
in order to show that LAWS ALONE will scarcely pro-
vide for a great increase of our valuable fishes, and
this because there is a greater or less opposition and
rivalry among those classes, which breaks up unani-
mity of PROTECTION, while the effect of their com-
bined action is unanimity of DESTRUCTION. That
good laws will be a wholesome check there can be no
doubt, but they alone will not suffice to make our
rivers and ponds a sure source of abundant food in
the same sense that our pastures are so.

On artificial breeding the Commissioners intend,
if possible, to make experiments next summer on a
large scale, both in the Connecticut and Merrimack
Rivers. If seconded by the authorities of Connecti-
cut, there is no reason why the fisheries, within two
or three years, should not be a good deal augmented.

When the fish way at Lowell was building some of
the factory superintendents (very intelligent men about
FACTORIES,) said that the fish must have a school-
master to teach them to go up those steps ! The
next year shad and salmon DID go up, and without
any schoolmaster. The nearer we get to the truth
the more it stands out that artificial propagation and
free passage over dams are the two great conditions
of restocking rivers. The question of pollution as-
sumes a smaller proportion. It now appears that
sawdust does not kill trout, but their SPAWN only,
and that chemicals, unless in unreasonable quantity,
do not much affect a great stream. The dreaded
Winsor Locks turn out to be comparatively innocent
of the destruction of young shad. Reasonable care

RIVER FISHERIES. 87

and just regulations will keep all these pollutions
within bounds, and render our streams fit habitations
for their people. Shad are by no means the only fish
that may be increased by artificial breeding. The
salmon has already been spoken of, and a table has
been given to illustrate this part of its history.

Thirty years ago no fresh salmon were brought to
our market from the British Provinces, simply be-
cause the Ponobscot, the Kennebec, and the Andros-
coggin were full of them, while the Canadians had
already exhausted the tributaries of the St. Lawrence
above, and including, the River Jaques Cartier. Now
we have shut out the fish by high dams, such as
those at Augusta, at Great Works, 8cc. But the
Canadians, by wise legislation, have re-peopled their
streams, and the St. Lawrence at present boasts 87
salmon tributaries.

These black bass, apparently impelled by no other
feeling than that of restlessness, performed an under-
ground journey of fifteen miles in a brick aqueduct
whose greater diameter was six feet !

The alewife, (alosa tyrannus,) although very inferior
to the species above cited, is valuable, first, on account
of its great prolificness, and secondly, because in its
ascent from the sea it will penetrate in vast numbers
the smallest brooks. At the spawning season it is
extremely tame, and will crowd into the locks of a
canal, or any unusual place, whereas the shad is much
more shy, and only effects the more open parts of a
stream. On the Agawam River, the ale wives, after
passing up a small ditch, whose lower end was among
the clatter of mill-wheels, and 25!) feet of which were
covered, pushed through an under-ground drain a
thousand feet long, in order to get to the pond where
they spawned. This under-ground drain became
stopped, and the young alewives could not get to the
sea. Some of them were taken in January, and had

88 AMERICAN

•oi grown since October, for they were no bigger than
in that month. Others, taken afterwards, were two-
thirds of their natural size ; but whether these last
old fish that had been shot in, or whether they
ronng of a previous season, or of the
not be determined. In a brook

water was so cold that the alewives avoided it,
Mr, Tudale tried an important experiment. H
a dam across, and in the pond thus formed pu \
aJewives, These bred there, and they and their y
pasted over the dam to the sea* The next *:
Urge numbers of alewives parsed op this brea-
the first time on record, and were seen leaping &
face of the dam, in vain attempt* to sarmount i t. I h i ••>
is a crucial experiment, so for as concerns tta t.
that a fish returns to its birthplace to spawn, even
tinder an unfavourable condition, (cold water,) but it
does not certainly prove that the ale wife gets its growth
in a single year. For those that were seen nii^hr
been the original breeders, together with some '
panions which they led from their usual course up the
warm stream. So far as is known, neither th
wile nor the shad get their growth in less t.h^n four
or five years. The instinct of return to bin
not absolute among these migratory fUbes ; u, <: r < o f «:
apparently certain stragglers— wrong-headed indi-
vidual*, which, like some men, refute to do * Unn^
simply h^jjime others &o do it And again, th<: in-

; v be modified by circumntances. 'I ^
1848, when the Merrimack wa» clo^:d by th«: Law-
renc^ ^ alenives, finding (lj<:if f^Uj i>on':'J ;,t.

';<#! about, deufcended ^'(- nv<-,r, coi

,

'mbm&tl of th - ' , •'• ( r; ''"^ iiu.i«:

stream almost solid, An. ':t wa« report^' i m

the i

:tiaa^ in dhapeof arirer'imouth by new stake*

RIVER FISHERIES. 89

nets, quitted the Natashqnan, and entered the neigh-
bouring; Kegaska. where they were recognised by their
superior size. On almost all our streams the ale-
wives have been exterminated by weirs, by scoop-
netting, and especially by dams, which shut them
from their favourite ponds. But if our people will
imitate the action of those interested in Mystic River*
they will get the tish back in £reat abundance. The
/hap. l-U\ iSo?,^ simply forbids fishing for five
years, and the people themselves have seen that a
suitable tishway is made over the dam at the outlet
of the pond. This action must come from the peo-
ple themselves. It has been the policy of the Com-
missioners to enforce reform upon the public. They
have tried to publish all important information on the
subject, and have held themselves ready to aid those
who asked tor advice or for the protection of the laws.
To extend and to unite their influence, the Commis-
sioners of Maine. New Hampshire. Vermont. Massa-
chusetts, and t have made an informal
association under the name of New England Commis-
sioners of River Fisheries. 4- They hold nuv
from time to time, and endeavour to establish a com-
mon policy for New K upland, in the attempt t*
store our indigenous fishes and to introduce now QMS.
In eonelusion, the Commissioners beg leave to pre-

* Stv \p}\-n>i\v. K.

t The following aw the names and addrwsw of tke
stoner* j—

,— Ch^rlesO. Atkins, A«f«O»; N. W. Fort*r. K**
A>*r Htmptkin H , n . U . A.
A. Sawboiu . " , ,

v . O. H«f«r. ProetortTilW ; Ho*. CWH* B*r~

rrtt. l»r.»tton.

Vlnrd R. Kield. QmMMM) TWo4w LT«M«.

OM

•

9O AMERICAN

sent the following summary of their present position
and requirements.

1. As to MONEY. Of the appropriations respec-
tively of 7,000 dollars and of 10,000 dollars, there will
probably remain subject to their draft, at the close of
this year, about 10,500 dollars. During the next
year there will be needed, for the prompt erection of
the great fish way at Holyoke, a sum of 15,000 to
1 7,000 dollars, and for the important attempts in the
artificial breeding offish, on a large scale, not less than
5,000 dollars, or a total of 22,000 dollars. As there
will doubtless be over 10,000 dollars on hand to begin
with, a further appropriation of 12,000 dollars ought
to suffice.

2. As to LAWS. Those now in force seem enough ;
and it only remains for this Commonwealth to com-
ply with the condition made by Connecticut in the
law passed by her last Assembly, by which the taking
of shad in the Connecticut River is forbidden, except
between the 15th of March and the 15th of June,
and between sunrise of Monday morning and sunset
of Saturday evening; and further, that no salmon
shall be taken before March 15th, 1872; all, how-
ever, on condition that Massachusetts shall impose
the same limitations of time. The Commissioners
therefore recommend that these restrictions be ex-
tended to that part of the Connecticut River lying
within the limits of this Commonwealth, provided
that the fish commissioners be allowed to take all fish
needed to re-stock this or any other waters of the
Commonwealth.

All of which is respectfully submitted.

THOMAS LYMAN,
ALFRED R. FIELD,

Commissioners.

RIVER FISHERIES. 91

APPENDIX EXTRACTS.

ARTIFICIAL BREEDING OF TROUT AND SHAD.

The artificial breeding of fishes is, in theory, familiar to most peo-
ple, but in practice, very little is known of the necessary details.

In France, thanks to the labours of Professor Coste in carrying out
the discoveries of Joseph Remy, pisciculture has become a true in-
dustry. The Imperial establishment at Huningue, founded fifteen
years ago, produced, in 1861, 16,000,000 of eggs. These were of
several species, (all, however, of the Salmonidse,) viz., the Fera,
(coregonus fera,) which is like our white fish ; the Ombre chevalier,
(Salmo umbla) called in the Tyrol, Salbling, and in England, Charr ;
the large and valuable Danube salmon, (salmo huchd), called Huchen
by the Germans ; the great trout of the lakes, (Salmo Trutta,) which
is the Seeforelle of the Germans, Truite Saumone'e of the French,
and sea trout of the English ; the common salmon, (salmo solar,)
and the European brook trout, (Salmo fario,) called Forelle by the
Germans. This excellent establishment is (or was) nevertheless de-
fective in two respects ; first, in the imperfect means of getting eggs,
which are callected at distant points, and consequently arrive often
in bad condition ; whereas, so extensive and well appointed a place
should, in most cases, raise or keep its own breeding fish ; secondly,
in the small variety of fish cultivated, and those all of one family.
All of which is said not to criticize what has been effected, but to
point out what may be iu future expected. To breed trout success-
fully there are needed (1,) good and abundant water; (2,) proper
apparatus ; (3,) a regular supply of breeding fish ; (4,) general skill
and care in the operation ; (5,) plenty of food. The water should
be of a spring ; pure, clear, and as near 47° the year round as may
be. Moreover, it should flow constantly. To avoid the mud and
overflow of freshets, the breeding ponds should never be in the main
stream. But this should be dammed, and from the mill-pond thus
made, a canal or a flume should be led to Supply the needful water.
At the mouth of this canal may be a sluice-gate against freshets, and
there must be, also, a barrier to prevent the escape of the fish. This
may be either a water-wheel moving below in a casing, and turned
by the current, or, if there should be a little fall, a horizontal raised
grating may be placed just under it. These contrivances are better

92 AMERICAN

than a vertical screen, which gets clogged with leaves, &c., and does
permit floating food to pass, which is a very important item. This
food consists of an immense variety of organisms, such as larvse of
dragon flies, minute Crustacea, water worms and beetles, young
fishes, aquatic snails, &c., &c. Its quantity may be increased by
placing a slanting boom at the mouth of the canal in such s. way as
to turn into it whatever the current brings down. The lower part
of the canal should be about 4 feet wide and 2 feet deep, and its
bottom should be of clean gravel, while the top is loosely covered
with boards.

This is the spawning bed. Beyond comes a pool or a pond for
breeding-fish, and furnished with a screened outlet. Such a pool
should be 4 feet deep, and its bottom weedy or earthy and in no case
covered with gravel. Other and smaller pools may be provided for
the young fish of different sizes, each with a good conduit of running
water and a screened outlet. The hatching house must also be sup-
plied by a conduit of running water and with a screened outlet.
This building is a simple close shed with small windows which can
be darkened at pleasure. Within are double ranges of shallow
troughs, communicating, by little sluice-gates, with a supply trough,
which, in turn, is filled from the lower end of the conduit outside
the building. This lower end is fitted with three flannel strainers,
through which the water passes, and then enters the supply trough
through a little sluice-gate. These strainers should be placed at an
angle, so as to present much surface, and should be made to slip in
and out, so that they may be frequently washed. Moreover, a
sluice-gate should always be placed below strainers, otherwise it gets
clogged by leaves, &c. Each spawn-trough in the range is 18
inches long by 12 wide, and is separated from its neighbours by a
ridge l£ inches high. The sides may be as high as 8 inches, which
gives a chance to back up the water, and make a trough of that depth,
after the fry hatch. The water furnished to each single range by the
sluce-gate should be equal to an inch stream with a three inch head.
The water runs down the range with a gentle current about an inch
deep, to secure which, a fall of 1 inch in 6 feet is enough. Hatching
troughs are usually made of wood, with a bottom of half an inch of
perfectly clean gravel about the size of peas.

To render the hatching house comfortable in the winter a stove
may be placed beyond the troughs. The pool, if 4 feet deep, 25
broad, and 40 long, will each contain several thousand breeding fish,
weighing from half a pound to a pound and a half. The bottom is
left earthy, in order that they may not deposit their spawn on it.
As soon as late autumn approaches the trout pair, and seek the con-
genial gravel of the covered spawning bed.

For very large fish, like salmon, it is convenient to have a second
man, who holds the tail, giving the other full use of his left hand.
It is not necessary to pay attention to the different pairs of trout ;
males and females may be taken indiscriminately, and the produce of

RIVER FISHERIES. 93

the whole mixed in a common pan. The water now assumes a milky
tinge, from the milt of the male while the ova sink at once to the
bottom, and there stick fast. They appear as little round bodies
about three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, (or larger, if the
parent be large,) of a pale yellow or an orange hue, according as the
parent has white or pink flesh.* They must be left in the pan as
long as they will stick, which will be fifteen or twenty minutes.f
Then the water must be gently drained off, fresh water poured in,
and this washing repeated once or twice. And here is the golden
rule for treating eggs of fishes : never touch them, but move them
by moving the water in which they lie. The washed eggs are now
ready to be spread in the hatching trough, which is done by tilting
the pan, and allowing them to slide gradually out, so that they do
not lie on top each other, and are not overcrowded. They may be
further arranged by agitating the water with a turkey's wing feather.
There may be placed about four thousand in each square, which is
eighteen by twelve inches. They should be allowed to remain un-
disturbed, but should be constantly watched, and those which die or
are attacked with mould, should be removed with forceps. The
minute vegetable growth, so fatal to eggs and even to young fish, is
very likely a true conferva, at least we may judge so from Vogt's
description of the parasitic plant that attacks the eggs of Coregonus.
To avoid it the precautions are : — 1st, pure running water of the
right temperature ; 2nd, very clean gravel washed in boiling water ;
3rd, the use of wood for troughs which is well dried, and free from
knots and acid juices ; 4th, the protection from dust, dirt, and sedi-
ment ; 5th, protection from strong sunlight. Green discovered this
by observing that where a band of sunshine fell from an uncovered
window across the troughs the ova within that limit died. A dead
ovum may readily be recognized by its dull opaqueness. It looks
like a drop of tallow. Furthermore, the troughs should be guaran-
teed against mice, water-insects, and snails. Where sediment
chances to settle on the ova the water should bestirred with a feather
until the current has carried off the deposit. If spawn is to be sent
away, the best time is from twenty to forty days after impregnation,
when the eyes show through the eggs as two black specks. Take
live moss, with long fine stems, and wash it till perfectly free from
dirt, place a layer of it, whilst moist, in a tin box with holes in the
bottom, place therein a layer of spawn, then another layer of moss,

* The colour of the flesh plainly does not depend on the crustacean food
which the trout gets, according 10 the theory of Dr. Gunther. Trout raised in
Green's pools, and having the same chance for food of this kind, are sometimes
pink and sometimes white fleshed. There is some reason to think this peculiarity
hereditary.

+ This temporary sticking is an extraordinary provision of nature, to enaW?
the eggs to cling to the bottom, and resist the current, until the parent has.'&U.d
time to cover it by sweeping gravel over it with her tail. It is probable Vha,t Yo&t.
was mistaken in supposing the eggs of salmonida? had no viscous coa'.,; Jit is peiv
haps in a soluble form. (Agassiz and Vogt in Poissons d'eau douce.) v . • • ' ' '' '
i 2

94 AMERICAN

then another of spawn, till the box is full. Put on a tin cover firmly,
and pack the box with sawdust in another and considerably larger
one. If kept cool the spawn will be good for at least fifty days, and
it has been thus preserved for eighty-five days. The best tempera-
ture is about 50°. At over 65° eggs suffer severely. The minimum
time for hatching is fifty days, the maximum one hundred and fifty
days. Then the little troutling lies feebly on its side, and for forty-
five days subsists entirely on the gradually absorbed yolk-sac, which
in nature seems to serve the double end of food and of an anchor
to hold it down among the gravel. At the end of that period the
little fish is free, and needs feeding. Now the water should be
backed up several inches deep in the troughs, and the fish fed twice
a day with raw beef liver cut as fine as jelly and bruised with water,
and very slowly given to them, so that it may be eaten up clean.

Water is to be had in plenty, but food is the turning point of pro-
fit or no profit in fish breeding. The little ones will get enough food
in a proper pond or brook if simply left to themselves ; but to grow
the larger fish rapidly, extra food in large quantities will be required.
The way to get this is the way of Comacchio : to breed one fish to
feed another ; and to let the first gain its own living from insects or
water-plants. Near the sea-coast vast quantities of little fish may
be had for the catching ; among which may be named the " friars"
(fundulus) that swarm in salt water ditches and creeks. These
scalded and given to trout produce a rapid growth, some getting to
half a pound and more in a year. There seems no reason why every
inland fish-breeding establishment should not hatch artificially large
quantities of small fish entirely as food for the more valuable trout.

TROUT BREEDING,

A trout-breeding establishment should have five artificial ponds of
an acre each, and four feet deep. These would hold 1,000,000 of
marketable fish. It should have two or three natural ponds, of a
dozen or twenty acres each, where fish could be bred wherewith to
feed the trout ; and finally, it should have pools for the breeding
fish, and hatching-houses in proportion to the quantity to be raised.

BREEDING SALMON,

Salmon for breeding should be treated like trout. They should
be taken in nets (from a late run if possible,) and confined in a run-
ning stream of some depth, and of a proper bottom, with shady banks,
and with hiding-places. From the stream should lead gravelly,
covered trenches, suitable for spawning beds, into which the pairs
of salmon would go in their season, and whence they could be taken
for breeding. The only difference would be that, whereas the trout
are kept from year to year, the salmon must be returned to the river
in order that that might go to the sea. Seth Green, who sat two
days in a tree to watch the salmon spawn, corroborates the account

RIVER FISHERIES. 95

given by Shaw a quarter of a century ago. The nests, or excava-
tions, are made not with the nose, but with the tail. Many of the
ova are neither impregnated nor co\ered, and are carried down stream,
where shoals of trout await them. The method of the trout is almost
identical. The female lies close to the bottom with her head up
stream, and gently fanning with her tail ; a few inches above lies
her mate keeping a sharp look out for all intruders, at whom he
darts furiously whenever they approach ; even the female rushes at
them when they are numerous. From time to time, she, by a spiral
contortion of the body, brings her tail with a strong sweep against
the gravel ; and this, after a while, makes a rough depression or
" nest." Over this she stays and begins a kind of serpentine motion
of the body, the object of which seems to be to work the eggs from
the ovary into the abdominal cavity. Presently the ova are ejected
with a convulsive tremor of the muscles, and simultaneously the
male throws the milt into the water. The eggs are covered in part
by the current, in part by the tails of the fish ; but many are not im-
pregnated at all, and many more are swept down stream, where they
are eaten by expectant fish.

Our trout shows many variations even in neighbouring localities.
Old John Trout, the veteran angler of Webster's day, could distin-
guish unfailingly a fish from Monument River, Red Brook, or Marsh-
pee Brook (all streams emptying near each other on the south side of
Cape Cod ;) and that not from colour, but from shape. The Dublin
lake trout of New Hampshire are well known for their peculiar deli-
cacy of form.

ARTIFICIAL BREEDING OF SHAD,

Early in last summer, Seth Green offered to come, at his own ex-
pense, and try to hatch the eggs of the shad at Holyoke, provided
the New England Commissioners would furnish the necessary appa-
ratus. This man bids fair to prove the Remy of this country, not
because he has succeeded in hatching a certain number of trout, but
because he has originality, as well as skill, and large ideas, as well
as originality. He has a living faith that our rivers, ponds, and
bays may, by artificial breeding, be so filled with fish, that, to use
his own words, " the people can't catch 'em out, if they try." With
more truth than fancy, he says, " Let your State spend a tenth part
in planting fish of what it spends in planting corn, (that don't pay
for the rising), and every poor man may have a fish dinner the year
round." The newspapers and periodicals have spoken of him, only
to say that he is a noted sportsman. To be a crack shot, and to
throw a fly eighty feet are things of no great matter, but to increase
and cheapen the food of a whole people is worthy the devotion of a
lifetime.

Having taken the ripe fish with a sweep-seine, he removed and
impregnated the ova in the way already described for trout. These,
to the number of some millions, he spread in boxes ; but, to his great

96

AMERICAN

mortification, every one of them spoiled. Nothing daunted, he ex-
amined the temperature of the brook, and found, not only that it was
13° below that of the river (6'2° to 75°,) but that it varied 12° from
night to day. This gave the clue to success. Taking a rough box,
he knocked the bottom and part of the ends out, and replaced them
by a wire gauze. In this box the eggs were laid, and it was anchored
near shore, exposed to a gentle current that passed freely through the
gauze, while eels or fish were kept off. To his great joy, the minute
embryos were hatched at the end of sixty hours, and swam about the
box, like the lavse of mosquitoes in a cask of stagnant water. Still,
though the condition of success was found, the contrivance was still
imperfect ; for the eggs were drifted by the current into the lower
end of the box, and heaped up, whereby many were spoiled for lack
of fresh water and motion. The best that this box would do was
ninety per cent., while often it would hatch only seventy or eighty
per cent.

The result was a triumph. Out of 10,000 ova placed in this con-
trivance, all but seven hatched ! In spite of these delays, and of the
imperfect means at hand for taking the fish, Green succeeded in
hatching, and setting free in the river, many millions of these tiny
fry.

In confinement they cannot be kept, because the yolk-sac does not
suffice for their support for more than one or two days. But care
must be taken to liberate them in a. safe place. Green observed that,
on setting them free among the shallows near shore, the dace (Argy-
reus) and other little fishes rushed to the spot, and commenced jump-
ing at them. In the stomach of a dace he found fourteen shad fry.
Then, by a series of most ingenious experiments, he discovered that
the fry, so far from frequenting the shallows, like many minnows,
made directly for the main current, in mid-river. How different
this from the young trouts that lie almost helpless for forty-five days,
and then are fain to hide behind stones and roots ! Whereas, these
minute, transparent, gelatinous things push boldly for the deep,
swift current, where they are too insignificant to be attacked by the
great fishes.

So the fry must be let go in the proper way by towing the boxes
into mid stream, or by liberating them during the night, when their
enemies do not feed.

The ovaries of a full-grown shad (Alosa praestaMlis) weigh at the
spawning season about thirteen ounces, without the membranes.
With a common lens, three sizes of ova are at once distinguished.
The first have a diameter of 8-100ths to 9-100ths of an inch. These
are transparent and ready to be laid ; the second, 4-100ths to 5-100ths
of an inch ; the third, 2-100ths of an inch. These two smaller sizes
are opaque ; they are still found after the fish has spawned, and are
the crops ready to mature the next year and the year after. This
state of the ovary has its parallel in the turtle, and possibly in all of
the vertebrata.

RIVER FISHERIES. 97

It is scarcely necessary to add that the microscope shows other and
smaller ovarian eggs. An ovary of the size above mentioned con-
tains about 70,000 ova, ready to be laid. Their diameter increases,
as soon as they are put in water and impregnated, from 9-100ths to
13-100ths of an inch. This is by the endosmosis of water between
the yoke and the shell membrane.* Of the embryonic development,
we have, as yet, only an imperfect outline to present. Forty-one
hours after impregnation, the condition of the embryo is, on the
whole, in advance of that of coregonus on the thirty-third day. The
under surface, from the nose to the beginning of the ventral, is in
close contact with the yolk, which is composed of a great number of
rounded divisions, such as are seen in the complete segmentation of
that body, while its surface is flecked with pigment stars, of which a
less number may be distinguished on the forward part of the trunk.

LEGISLATION, 1868.
AS TO FREE PASSAGE OF FISH, BY FISHWAYS, OVER WEIRS,

By the law of this Commonwealth, all persons who may build dams
on streams annually frequented by fish, do so under an obligation to
keep open sufficient fish-ways for the passage of such fish ; unless
they are relieved by a special Act of the legislature.

The following is the legislation which concerns this Report more
particularly : —

[CHAP. 62.]

An Act to protect the Shad Fishery in the Connecticut River.
Be it enacted, fyc., as follows : —

SECT. I. No person shall set, draw, or sweep any seine or net,
the meshes of which are less than two and one- fourth inches square
when new and dry, for the purpose of catching shad or any other fish
in that part of the Connecticut river which is within the limits of
this Commonwealth, and below the dam across said river at Holyoke,
between the first day of May and the fifteenth day of July, during
each year.

* The same takes place in a less degree in the egg of Coregonus (white fish.)
(Carl Vogt, loc cit. p. 27, PI. I fig. 9.; Accustomed only to eggs of trout, Green
was much astonished to behold the mass of ova swell to near twice its first bulk.

AMERICAN

SECT. 2. Every person violating the provisions of the preceding
section shall be liable to a fine of not less than ten nor more than
fifty dollars for each offence, to be recovered in any court competent
to try the same ; ooe-half of said fine to inure to the use of the town
in which the offence shall be committed, and the other half to the
person who shall prosecute therefor.

SECT. 3. This act shall take effect upon its passage. [Approved
March 2, 1864.

[CHAP. 238.]

An Act concerning the Obstructions to the passage of Fish in the

Connecticut and Merrimack Rivers.
Be it enacted. 8[c., as follows: —

SECT. 1. The governor, by and with the advice and consent of
the council, is hereby authorized to appoint two persons to be com-
missioners of fisheries in the Merrimack and Connecticut rivers, who
shall hold said office for the term of five years, unless sooner removed
therefrom. And in case of any vacancy in said board, the governor
shall have power to fill the same.

SECT. 2. Said commissioners shall forthwith examine the several
dams on said rivers in this Commonwealth, and shall, after notice to
the owners of said dams, determine and define the mode and plan
upon which fish-ways shall be constructed suitable and sufficient in
their opinion to secure the free passage of salmon and shad up said
rivers during their accustomed seasons.

SECT. 3. It shall be the duty of the commissioners appointed
under this act, when they shall have determined upon the method
and plan for such fish-ways, to submit a full and specific statement
and description of the same to any board of commissioners empowered
to act by the state of New Hampshire, upon the same or similar sub-
jects, for their approval.

SECT. 4. If any plan so submitted shall be approved by the said
commissioners for the state of New Hampshire, the commissioners
under this act shall forthwith upon such approval being expressed,
furnish a copy of the plan adopted for each dam to the proprietors
thereof, and shall file a copy of each of such plans in the office of the
secretary of the Commonwealth, with an affidavit of the fact that
the same has been furnished to said proprietors, which affidavit shall
be full proof of the facts therein stated.

SECT. 5. If the several proprietors of said dams shall consent to
construct said fish-ways according to the several plans adopted for
their respective dams, at their own expense, the commissioners under
this act may agree with the proprietors of the several dams so to do.
And when the same shall have been constructed within such reason-
able time as said commissioners shall prescribe, and according to said
plans, with such minor variations therein as said commissioners shall
approve, the said commissioners shall certify said construction to the

RIVER FISHERIES. 99

secretary of the Commonwealth, and the same shall for the period of
five years from the passage of this act be taken and deemed as in lieu
of the fish-ways, which said proprietors respectively are now required
by law to keep and maintain over, at, or around their respective
dams. But said proprietors respectively shall be required to keep
said fish-ways on their respective dams in good repair, and to main-
tain the same for the period of five years from the passage of this act
to the satisfaction of said commissioners ; and during the period of
said five years the liability of said proprietors respectively to build
and maintain the fish-ways now by law required of them shall be
suspended.

SECT. 6. When said fish-ways shall have been constructed as
aforesaid, the commissioners under this act shall prescribe in writing
the times when the same shall be kept open and obstructed, with
power to change such times as they may deem judicious. And a copy
of such prescriptions shall be served on each of such proprietors, and
the certificate of said commissioners of the manner in which the same
have been served shall be full proof of the fact.

SECT. 7. If any proprietor of any dam shall refuse or neglect,
for the period of thirty days from the time said commissioners shall
have furnished said proprietors with the plan, as herein before pro-
vided, to agree with said commissioners for the building at, over, or
around his dam of the fish-way prescribed by the plan furnished such
proprietors by said commissioners, then said commissioners shall be
authorized to contract in behalf of this Commonwealth for the con-
struction of the fish-way at, over, or around the dam of said pro-
prietor so refusing or neglecting. And said commissioners shall
thereupon cause such fish-way to be constructed with all reasonable
dispatch. And the expense thereof shall be a charge against the
owner of such dam, and the same may be recovered of said proprietor
in an action of contract in the name of the Commonwealth, with
costs and twelve per cent, interest on the amount of such expense
from the time when the same shall have been demanded of such pro-
prietor by said commissioners.

SECT. 8. Whenever, in the construction of any such fish-way,
the property of any person not liabla by law to provide a suitable and
sufficient fish-way at, over, or around such person's dam, shall be
taken for the purpose of such fish-way, the said commissioners shall,
upon the application in writing of the person aggrieved, assess a
reasonable compensation therefor, to be paid by the Commonwealth.
And any person aggrieved by such assessment shall have the right to
have such compensation determined by a jury, in the manner pro-
vided by the General Statutes for the assessment of damage occasioned
by the laying out of highways.

SECT. 9. Said commissioners shall have power to contract with
the proprietor of any dam on either of said rivers, for the suspen-
sion for five years from the passage of this act of the liability of said
proprietor to construct at his own expense any fish-way at, over, or

I OO AMERICAN

around his said dam, upon the payment by said proprietor to the
treasurer of the Commonwealth of such a sum of money as said com-
missioners shall deem reasonable, and a copy of any such contract,
attested by said commissioners, shall be filed in the office of the
secretary of the Commonwealth.

SECT. 10. Said commissioners shall have power to contract with
the Essex Company for the construction of the fish-way prescribed
by said commissioners over the dam of said company, at Lawrence,
by said company, at an expense to the Commonwealth not exceeding
seven thousand dollars, the said Essex Company to pay the expense
of such building over and above the said amount so to be paid by
the Commonwealth.

SECT. 11. The compensation of each of said commissioners shall
be determined by the governor and council.

SECT. 12. The commissioners appointed under this act shall have
power to construct, or to contract for the construction of, such ap-
pliances and structures as they may think essential or useful for the
passage of the fish herein named up and down said rivers, and for
their protection in such passage.

SECT. 13. Said commissioners may in their discretion delay the
definite construction of fish-ways on the Connecticut river, until they
shall be satisfied that such legislation has been adopted by the state
of Connecticut as shall in their opinion be necessary to secure the
free passage of the fish above named through the part of said river
running through said state of Connecticut.

SECT. 14. There shall be appropriated and paid by the treasury
of the Commonwealth a sum not exceeding seven thousand dollars,
to defray the expenses of the commissioners herein created and of
constructing the fishways herein provided for.

SECT. 15. Any person who shall neglect or refuse to keep open
or maintain any fish-way at the times prescribed by the commissioners
under this act, shall forfeit the sum of fifty dollars for each day's
neglect or refusal so to keep open or maintain said fish-ways, to be
recovered by indictment in the county where said dam, or a part
thereof, is situated, one-half thereof to the use of the complainant
and the other half to the use of the Commonwealth.

SECT. 16. This act shall take effect upon its passage. [Approved
May 15, 1866.

[CHAP. 249.]

An Act for the protection of Trout and Black Bass.
Be it euacted, 8fc., as follows: —

SECT. 1. Whoever takes or catches any trout in any rivers,
streams, or ponds, between the twentieth day of September and the
twentieth day of March, or within the time aforesaid sells, buys, or
has in his possession any trout so taken within this State, shall for-
feit one dollar for each trout so caught or taken, sold, bought, or had
in possession.

RIVER FISHERIES. IOI

SECT. 2. Whoever shall take or catch any fish called black bass
in any of the ponds within the limits of this Commonwealth, from
the first day of December to the first day of June, or at any time,
except with hook and line, shall forfeit a sum of not less tl.an two
nor more than twenty dollars for each offence, to be recovered by
prosecution before any court competent to try the same.

SECT. 3. In all prosecutions for forfeitures under the provisions
of this act, the fact of sale, purchase, or possession shall be evidence
that the trout or black bass so sold, purchased, or had in possession,
were taken within this state. [Approved May 22, 186G.

[CHAP. 344.]
An Act to regulate Fisheries.

Be it enacted, 8fc., as follows : —

SECT. 1. The commissioners of fisheries appointed under chapter
two hundred and thirty-eight of the acts of the year eighteen hundred
and sixty-six, in addition to their powers and duties under said act,
are hereby authorized to examine all the dams upon rivers in this
Commonwealth over and around which the proprietors are now re-
quired by law to keep and maintain fish-ways, and said commission-
ers shall determine whether said fish-ways are .suitable and sufficient
for the passage of such fish as are found in said rivers ; and if, after
inspection, the said commissioners shall fi;id said fish-ways are un-
suitable or insufficient for the passage of fish, or are out of repair,
or are not kept open at suitable times, they shall give notice to the
proprietors of said dams of any defect in their fish-ways, or that the
fish-ways are not kept open the proper time. And said commission-
ers shall further, in writing, prescribe the times for keeping open and
unobstructed said fish-ways, and what repairs may be necessary, and
what changes, if any, should be made for improving said fish-ways.

SECT. 2. Any person or corporation who shall neglect or refuse to
keep open or maintain any fish-way at the times prescribed by the
commissioners under this act, shall forfeit the sum of fifty dollars for
each day's neglect or refusal so to keep open or maintain said fish-
way, to be recovered by indictment in the county where said dam,
or any part thereof, is situated, one-half to the use of the complain-
ant and the other half to the use of the Commonwealth.

SECT. 3. There shall be appropriated and paid out of the treasury
of the Commonwealth a sum not exceeding ten thousand dollars, to
defray the expenses of the commissions, first, in restocking the rivers
of Massachusetts with shad, salmon, and alewives ; second, in re-
stocking the ponds in this Commonwealth, for the purpose of propa-
gating black bass and other fish. [Approved June 1, 1867.

IO2 AMERICAN

[CHAP. 289.]

An Act to regulate Fishing in Merrimack River, and for other
purposes.

Be it enacted, fyc., as follows .—

SECT. 1. No person shall fish with a seine in Merrimack river,
nor in any manner take or catch shad, salmon or alewives in said
river, until the fifteenth day of April, in the year eighteen hundred
and seventy. one, under penalty of the forfeiture of the seine and of
five dollars for each shad or alewife, and fifty dollars for each salmon
taken : provided, that the fish commissioners shall be allowed from
time to time to take such fish as may be required to re-stock the
Merrimack or any other rivers.

SECT. 2. No person shall fish within four hundred yards of any
fish-way on Merrimack river, nor trespass within the limits of the
same, under a penalty of fifty dollars.

SECT. 3. The fish commissioners are hereby empowered to cause
any tributaries of the Merrimack river to be opened to the passage
of shad, salmon, and alewives, by directing the proprietors of dams
in such tributaries to build suitable fish-ways over their dams.

SECT. 4. The mayor and alderman of any city and the selectmen
of any town bordering on the Merrimack river shall appoint one or
more suitable fish-wardens and fix their compensation, to see to the
execution of the provisions of the first and second sections of this
act. [Approved May 31, 1867.

[CHAP. 149.]

An Act for the re-stocking of Mystic River and its tributaries
with Fish.

Be it enacted, fyc., as follows: —

SECT. 1. The right to take alewives or shad from Mystic river
or its tributaries, or from Mystic pond, shall be and hereby is sus-
pended for the period of five years next ensuing, and no net, seine,
or weir shall be set therein during said period.

SECT. 2. Any person violating the provisions of this statute shall
forfeit one dollar for every alewife or shad so taken.

SFCT. 3. All prosecutions under this act shall be commenced
within thirty days from the time of committing the offence.

SECT. 4. The several " committees for the preservation of fish "
of the towns of Medford, Somerviile, West Cambridge or Winches-
ter, may remove and destroy any and all nets, seines or weirs found
in said waters during the said period of five years. (Approved
April 13th, 1867.

The following is the Act of New Hampshire, and it has been fol-
lowed by another, prohibiting the taking of shad and salmon in the
Merrimack : —

RIVER FISHERIES. IO3

" That if any person shall erect or maintain any dam or weir upon
the Connecticut or Merritnack rivers, or upon the Pemigewasset or
Ammonoesuck or Winnipisiogee rivers, or Baker's river, without
providing a suitable fishway over or through the same, which shall
be approved in writing by the Fish Commissioners, and be kept open
during the months of May and June, in each year, he shall forfeit
and pay, for each day's continuance of said dam without such fish-
way, the sum of ten dollars, to be recovered by indictment, for the
use of the county in which the offence is committed. Provided, that
this law shall go into effect whenever, and not before, suitable fish-
ways for the passage of sea-fish over the dams on said river or
rivers, below the boundary of this State, shall have been commenced ;
which fact is to be determined by the proclamation of the governor."
(Approved July 1, 1805.)

The followiug is the Act of Connecticut touching the investigation
by the Coast Survey ; also the Act referred to in this Report, and
which regulates the fishing : —

(Private Acts and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State
of Connecticut, May session, 1867. Page 254.)

" Resolved by this Assembly, That the fish commissioners who
may be appointed by his excellency the Governor be, and are, hereby
authorized to take steps necessary to procure information through
the superintendent of the United States Coast Survey, in all matters
pertaining to the fishing interest ; to learn, as- far as possible, what
general laws govern fish along our coast in regard to propagation,
migration, &c. ; provided, however, that the investigation of (the)
same shall not be attended with any special outlay from the State
treasury." (Approved July 27, 1867.)

[Chapter III.]

An Act in addition to " An Act for Encouraging and Regulating
Fisheries." Be it enacted, fyc. :

SECT. 1. No person shall take from the Connecticut river any
shad, at any other time thjin between the fifteenth day of March and
the fifteenth day of June in each year ; and no person shall set or
draw any net or seine for the purpose of taking fish in said river, at
any other time than between the rising of the sun on Monday
morning and the setting of the sun on Saturday evening of each
week ; and every person who shall at any other time, take any shad,
or set or draw any net or seine, in said river, or aid or assist
therein, shall forfeit the sum of one hnndred dollars to the treasury
of the State ; provided, that nothing in this section shall apply to
taking of fish by order of the commissioners for the purpose of arti-
ficial or natural propagation of the same.

IO4 AMERICAN RIVER FISHERIES.

SECT. 2. No persons shall take from the Connecticut river, any
salmon, before the fifteenth day of March, A.D. 1872, and any
person so taking salmon, shall pay to the treasury of the county
where such offeuce is committed a fine of twenty dollars for each fish
so taken.

SECT. 3. All complaints for violation of this Act, and of the
Aot to which this Act is an addition , may be matle to the superior
court by the Stale's attorneys of the several counties where the
offences are committed, and where the nuisances exist ; and when-
ever the superior court is not in session, such State's attorneys may
make complaint to a justice of the peace in any town adjoining the
water at the place where such offence is committed, and such attor-
ney shall receive the same fees for services as for trials in superior
court, which fees shall be taxed as part of the costs of prosecution.

SECT. 4. For the purposes of this Act and of all Acts regulating
and relating to fisheries, the rivers, streams, coves, inlets and bays
and sounds, and all parts thereof, within the jurisdiction of the
State, shall be deemed to be entirely in either county and in either
town adjoining said waters, at a place where any violation of this
Act is committed, and the State's attorneys, sheriffs, and deputy-
sheriffs of said counties respectively, and the constables and justices
of the peace of said towns respectively, shall act in relation thereto,
in the same manner as though said river was entirely in the county
to which said sheriffs, deputy-sheriffs, and State's attorneys belong,
or in the town to which said justices of the peace or constables
belong.

SECT. 5. The Governor shall appoint three Commissioners
who shall hold office for one year, and until their successors are ap-
pointed, and whose duties shall be to make complaints of all viola-
tions of the Acts relating to fisheries, to the proper informing
officer, to consider the subject of the introduction, protection, and
culture offish in our waters, to co-operate with fish commissioners
of other States, and to make report of such facts and suggestions as
may be material to the Legislature.

SECT. 6. Such Commissioners shall receive for their services,
the sum of three dollars per day, and their actual disbursements
while employed in such official duty.

SECT. 7. The limitation of the time of taking shad and salmon
in the first and second sections of this Act, shall not take place
until the legislature of Massachusetts at its next session shall pre-
scribe the same limitations to the catching of shad and salmon in
said river as are contained in said sections. All parts of the Act to
which this Act is an addition and inconsistent herewith, are hereby
repealed. (Approved July 26 , 1867.

NORWEGIAN RIVER FISHERIES. 1 05

EXTRACTS BY Mons. HERMANN BAARS,
SPECIAL COMMISSIONER for the FISHE-
RIES AND NA VIGATION OF
NORWAY, 1867.

NORWAY is a narrow region, intersected by numerous deep bays,
and encompassed by thousands of small islands. The most nume-
rous fish are the cod, or gadus, and herrings.

The cod fishery station at Lofaten extends over a distance of about
60 miles, the population is about 20,000, occupied chiefly in the
cod fishery, at Lofaten. This cod fishery alone employs about
5,500 boats, manned by 21,000 men, who catch ordinarily from 20
to 25 millions of cod-flsh annually. The sea is so tempestuous
during the winter fishing season, that it is impossible to carry on
the fishing for more than two days in the week.

The produce of the boats is very variable, but frequently in a
single voyage they bring back from 10 to 12,000 cod-fish, and 12
barrels of cod liver oil, and 10 barrels of roe, of the value of about
3,500 franks, or £140, or £25 per man.

Besides the fishery of Lofaten there are smaller fisheries at Nord-
land and Tondhjern, extending over less than 40 miles, there are
3,000,000 cod-fish caught which are dried and 'cured.

A more important fishery extends along the coast of Western
Tinmarkin.

The fishery of Eastern Tinmarkin yields 10 or 12,000,000 of cod-
fish annually, and of a finer quality.

The Ron.sdal, Nordmelk, &c., the fishery employs 1,200 to
1,500 boats, and produces from 6, to 8,000,000 of cod-fish which
are dried and cured, and they salt and reserve for their own use the
roe, but they sell the liver of the fish for medicinal oil, manufactu-
ries of which have establishments on that part of the coast, the
tradespeople in the towns of Christiansund, Molde, and Aalesund,
equip boats for this object.

Norway does not live on this great cod fishery alone. In the nor-
thern districts a large portion is exported. At Tinmarkin there are
20,000 barrels of cod-fish — the result of the summer fishing — sent
away in Russian boats, which bring in exchange rye, flour, and flax,
from the White Sea.

From numerous other kinds of flsh a considerable revenue is also
derived, and employment afforded to a large number of people.
Many kinds of cod-fish are found along the coast of Norway. The
fish are migratory, and the men follow them. The cod livers are
cleaned, and washed, and placed in tin pots, and the oil extracted by
K 2

IO6 NORWEGIAN

steam, and is divided into five qualities. France buys nine-tenths of
all the roe of fish.

THE HERRING FISHERY,

Whilst northern Norway devotes itself to the cod fishery, the
southern Norwegians prepare for the herring fishery, which mainly
lies between Cape Lindesnas and Cape Stat, the navigation herring
fishery in the 9th century was one of the chief sources of the wealth
of the country, and has never since ceased to be actively pursued,
although singular changes have taken place in its visits to the coast
— for instance, we know that in the first half of the 16th century
the winter herring was very abundant in the neighbourhood of
Bergen, whilst in 1567 it appears to Imve altogether deserted these
feeding-grounds. During the first half of the 17th century it had
returned again, and from 1650 to 1654, there was a total cessation
of the fishery, in all probability the herring did not return to that
coast until about 1699 or 1700, from that time up to 1784, the
influx was variable but always productive. In 1784 it disappeared
and the fishery was not reopened until 1808 ; from that time it has
continued without interruption to the present year. The boats are
30 feet in length, and 10 feet in width, and three to four feet
deep, manned by four or five men, and geared with from fifteen to
thirty nets.

The herring fishery employs about 6,000 boats, manned by
30,000 men. From an estimate, which extends to 1854, the fishery
to the south of Bergen gave employment to 3,749 boats with nets,
and carrying 15,311 men. 316 fishery companies employed 6,628
men to the south of Bergen.

On the north of Bergen there were 1,261 boats, with nets, and
employing 5,596 men, and twenty-four fishing companies, compri-
sing 455 persons.

In 1860 these figures were increased for the northern fishery to
2,632 boats and nets, and manned by 12,781 men, and by 27 com-
panies, formed of 608 men. Sometimes thousands of boats are to
be seen drawing their nets — they estimate the number of boats at
6,000, and the number of fishermen at 33,000.

In 1865 the whole number of people employed in the winter
herring fishery, taking sailors and all others employed, the number
was estimated at not less tiian 50,000, the annual produce of this
fishery has fluctuated between 600 and 800,000 barrels of fresh her-
ring, of which only about 50,000 barrels were consumed in the
country; the average price of a barrel has been 10 franks or 8s. —
the net gain of each man realised about 200 to 270 franks, say about
£ll each for the winter herring season.

The summer herring fishery is also of great importance. It is
impossible to value exactly its product; but it is probable that it is
from 4 to 0§0,000 barrels — a barrel contains 550 herrings. Nearly

RIVER FISHERIES.

all the fishermen own the boats and nets they use. The herrings
are principally sent to Russia, Prussia, Sweden, Great Britain, &c.
The produce of tiie sprat is estimated at 40 to 50,000 barrels.

THE MACKEREL FISHING,

Each boat produces about from 1,000 to 3,000 each night, but by
the barrage (large) nets the fishermen sometimes catch 10,000 to
20,000 in a single haul of the net. This fishery has been so much
develoyed in the last few years that there are now about 2,.")00 boats,
which have caught from thirty to thirty-five millions of fish during
a season. They are so abundant that they are preserved in ice and
sent to England. The roe of the mackerel that are consumed in
Norway, as well as the cod roe, are sent to France, as bait for the
catching of sardines.

LOBSTERS,

The lobster fishery is of great importance in the northern districts
of northern Norway, for it not only supplies a very much prized food
for the population, but it supplies an export commerce amounting in
value to not less than from 7, to 800,000 francs a year, (^32,000),
and in addition to the crab fish.

OYSTERS,

All along the coast from Namsenfiord to Christianafiord you meet
with banks of oysters, some of large extent. They supply the wants
of the country ; but in consequence of ignorance or negligence many
of the oyster banks have been destroyed or exhausted. Now, how-
ever, they are beginning to better understand the value of these
natural sources of wealth. The existing banks are treated with much
more care, oyster culture is becoming much more general, and
there is every reason to believe that this shell fish will become one
of the most important products of the country.

SALMON AND TROUT,

There is scarcely a river or rivulet in Norway of any importance
in which the salmon is not found — justly named the noblest of fishes.
The salmon fisheries have been justly regarded as one of the great
sources of national wealth. It is met with in the sea on almost every
part of the coast, and in most of the feords ; but it is very rarely in
large quantities, in consequence of the ignorant avidity of the fisher-
men, wh« have partly depopulated these waters by capturing the
young salmon. The law forbids the catching of salmon from the 14th
September to the 14th of February ; it forbids the placing of nets
across the rivers, or any fixed engine across the entrance to the
rivers that might exclude the salmon from mounting the streams ;
it has fixed the mesh of the nets at a minimum of 6 centimetre, and
prevents the catching of any fish of less than 21 centimetre in length.

io8

NORWEGIAN

The law has also cultivated the science of pisciculture, has trans-
ferred the salmon to lakes where it had previously not been known,
and has erected ladders over many water-falls and insurmountable
obstacles, which justifies the belief that the salmon will be more
abundant in Norway.

In the spring the salmon come from the sea, where they live dur-
ing the winter, and mount the rivers to the lakes.

It is impossible to value exactly the produce of this fishery, but
it is estimated at 2,000,000 francs, or ,£80,000. 100,000 kilos,
about 200,000 Ibs. English weight, of fresh salmon are exported in
ice every year to England.

In Norway a great number of the proprietors of rivers let the right
of fishing, at comparatively large rents, to English amateurs who spend
the summer in Norway, and who, independently of the rent they pay,
give up the fish they capture.

The trout visits the same rivers as the salmon, and the fishing of
these two fish are regulated by the same laws and is exercised in the
same manner.

SEALS

Are found along the coast of Norway, and in this fishery they man
about 20 ships, of from 200 to 300 tons each, with crews of from 40
to 50 men each. The produce amounts to 2 or 2£ millions of francs,
(£80,000).

RIVERS AND LAKES,

Norway possesses a great number of rivers and lakes, but, from
neglect, the majority do not yield much fish. There is good reasou
to hope that this state of things will be rapidly improved. The tak-
ing of small fish has been prohibited ia all seasons, and experiments
in pisciculture have been commenced on a large scale, and has suc-
ceeded beyond all expectation. Numerous lakes have been stocked
with fish, and they have increased prodigiously. As we have already
stated, the salmon has been introduced into rivers and waters where
it had previously never been known.

The value of these fresh-water fisheries cannot be estimated at
less than from If to 2 millions of francs per annum (£60,000).

The following table shews exactly the amount and value of the an-
nual exports of the fisheries of Norway, and we may see from the fol-
lowing figures it is considerable, and is always increasing : —

Winter herrings, 600,000 barrels at 18 francs ..
Summer herrings, '200,000 do. at 20 fraucs . .
Cod, salted, 2-2,000,000 kll., at 40 francs the 100 kil.
Cod, dried, 1-2,000,000 kil., at 35 francs the 100 kil.

Salted fish, 60,000 barrels, at iO fravcs

Fish liver oil, 1^0,000 barrels, at 90 francs .. .
Koe (rogues of fish), 35,000 barrels, at f-0 francs .
Lobsters, '2,000,000, at 30 cents (about2f Ji.) each .

Fresh fish

Fish guano, 3iO,000 kilo?., at 20 francs the 100 kilos.
The consumption of the country may be estimated at

The total produce of the fisheries .. . .

Francs.

4 s. d.

10,100,000

432,000 0 0

4,000,000

160,000 0 0

8,800,000

3^2,000 0 0

4,200,000

168,000 0 0

l,2i>0,000

48,000-0 0

5,400,090

210,003 6 0

1,750,000

70,000 0 0

600,000

24,000 0 0

1,000,000

40,000 0 0

70,000

2,f>$0 0 0

12,000,000

480,80* 0 0

49,820,000

1,992,803 6 0

RIVER FISHERIES.

Total stated at 50 millions of francs, or two millions of pounds,
English, annudlly.

The'-e are no imposts placed upon the sea fisheries, but no fishing
is allowed on Sundays, and the fisherman has to pay the owner ot the
land on the coast something for landing his nets.

The right of fishing in the lakes and rivers belongs to the pro-
prietors of land adjoiuing.

Fishing on the coast is interdicted to strangers to a distance of one
Norwegian mile.

It is further stated that the population of Norway was 1.701,365.
The annual value of the agricultural produceis stated at .£"4, 800, 000,
the forests at ,£"2,200,000, and the fisheries at .£"2,000,000 ; conse-
quently the fisheries annually produce food of the value of £\ : 3s.
6'd. for every man, woman, and child.

In the fishing season about 100,000 persons find employment.

Salmon, mackerel, lobsters, and crabs are sent, packed in ice, to
England — of the value of about £80,000 annually.

RUSSIAN FISHERIES.

EXTRACTS FROM THE REPORT ON THE

FISHERIES OF RUSSIA, BY C. DANIL-

E WSKY, PRESIDENT OF THE

COMMISSION.
J

It has not been possible to obtain exact statistics of the extent of
the Russian fisheries. Some belong to the crown, others to great
proprietors. Fishing and the preparation of the flsli is done by
wholesale. The fishermen are hired for the time, at fixed wages, and
all the fish they catch are taLen to a central establishment, called
" Vataga." The. fish are hung up in a building erected upon piles,
at high water mark. Here they are opened, the intestines quickly
taken out and separated, and the fish prepared as required. Some
are taken to ice caves, where they are sailed in large tubs. Each
operation is performed by a clever workman, aud an account is kept
of every fish and Ib. of covier, isinglass, and vesiga. There are

IIO RUSSIAN

many dozens of such establishments on the mouth of the Volga, but
the largest in the world is on the Oural. It is known by the name
of the "divine fishery." The value of the produce of this fishery
cannot be less than 500,000 silver roubles (about ,£87,500) a year.
There are days in April when they catch £4,000 worth of fish. It
might be easy to obtain exact statistics of these establishments if the
distrust of the tenants, farmers, was not so great. As the Russian
laws prevent the sea and lakes being private property these stations
are only found at the mouths of rivers. Parts of the Caspian Sea
and Sea of Azov belong to the Cossack corporations. Some of these
have fixed imposts on the produce of these fisheries. This enables
us to find out the amount of their produce, but in other parts it is
impossible, especially when they are worked by small fishermen with-
out much means. We may, however, calculate the value of the fish-
eries of Russia in Europe at not less than .£'3,500,000 annually.
The Caspian Sea, with th,: lower parts of the Vol^a, Furel, Oura!,
and Lerek, at about ,£1,837, 500 ; the &ea of Azov at about £700 000;
the Baltic at £218,750 ; the White- Sea at £175,000 ; and the Black
Sea at £105,000. The produce of the five seas which bathe the
coasts of Russia in Europe may be valued at £2,975.000 annually.
The value of the fisheries in the interior of Russia, the lakes and
upper parts of the rivers, are not certain, but are probably not less
than £437,500 annually. Lake of Peypous — 125,000 tons of dried
sprats or smelts, with other fish, valued at £105,000 ; Lake Kou-
binskoie, in Voligda, at £26,250 ; Lakes Ladoga, Onega, &c,, at
£262,500 ; and Volga and its affluents about £70,000. It is very
difficult to make an account of the quantity of fish, owing to the dif-
ference in the measurements or weights used. The different pro-
ducts of the sturgeon, caviat, &c,, are sold at 10s. per 40 Ibs. ; other
fish 5s. per 40 Ibs. The total quantity may be estimated at25,000,000
pouds (of 40 Ibs. each), or a thousand millions of pounds (livres),
not couutiug what is consumed in the country by 100,010 fishermen
and their families. We know of but one work which enables us to
make a comparison of our fisheries, namely, " Researches in Natural
History, on the Coast of France," by M. M. Audin and Milne Ed-
wards. According to these writers, the quantity of cod and its
products caught in the waters of Newfoundland by France is
1,375,000 pouds, which are worth 1,885,000 roubles, or about
£314,000. English fisheries in Newfoundland— 2,700,000 pouds,
about 108 millions of pounds. The produce of the American fish-
eries is not given, but they cannot be less than the English — 108
millions of Ibs. weight. The produce of the Newfoundland fisheries,
including the coasts of Labrador, belonging to these three nations
must therefore be 6,800,000 pouds, at a value of 37 millions francs,
or £1,480,000. The value of this fishery is therefore less than that
of the Caspian Sea. In this work the French fisheries are estimated
as worth 13,500,000 francs, or £520,000. The produce of the Nor-
wegian fisheries in herrings and cod ouly, are, according to infor-

FISHERIES. 1 1 1

mation collected on the spot, about ;£!, 248,325. In summing up
the separate values of the Newfoundland, Norwegian, and French
fisheries we arrive at the sum of ,£?3,140,000, which does not equal
the produce of the seas, principal lakes, and rivers of Russia in
Europe. From this comparison arises two questions — How is it that
vsith such an abundance of fish Russia exports so little ? and how is
it that such comparatively insignificant lakes as the Caspian and
Azov are able to rival in produce the greatest part of the Atlantic
Ocean and a part of the Mediterranean ? The first of these is easily
answered. Russia is inhabited by 70 millions of persons. Besides
this, during most of the religious fasts, observed on 150 days in the
year, fish is the oply animal food used. Russia even imports up-
wards of ,£"300,000 worth of fish (1,500,000 herrings and from 4 to
500,000 cod, principally from Norway, besides sardines, anchovies,
and other fish used for sauces and preserves,) while she does not ex-
part more than ,£'12,500 worth. The second of these questions can
only be answered by an examination of the natural history of fish, or
rather of waters. In the fresh or brackish lakes of the Caspian and
Azov every thing unites in producing abundance of fish — the quantity
of organic matter, and the great growth of vegetable life, producing
again insects and infusoria, on which the fish are nourished. The
Sea of Azov does not exceed 44 feet and the Caspian 50 feet in depth.
This slight depth encourages an abundant growth of plants and
animal food for the fish. There is also another cause for the riches
of these lakes. The mouths of the rivers separate into many small
streams before entering the lakes. In these the plants grow abun-
dantly, and there the fish lay their eggs, the young fish being both
protected from their enemies and well fed and nourished. It is diffi-
cult to calculate the separate quantities of the different kinds offish.
1st, there are 4 species of sturgeons, of which the value is probably
about .£1,200, 000. These fish are known under the commercial
name of red fish. 2nd, the fish used in the manufactories for oil,
&c., viz., the sandre, two kinds of herrings, breme, tarane, and smelts,
valued at ,£175,000. 3rd, the cod, carpe, salmon, and
white salmon, valued at ,£87,500. The salmon is found in the
North Sea and in the rivers. The white salmon in the
Volga, Dwina, and Petchora. The quantity of this fish amounts to
100,000 pouds, or 4,000,01)0 Ibs. 4thly, fish of the value of ,£34,000,
navaga and chemaia. The navaga fish is found in the White Sea, in
the Gulf of Onega, in the Dvina, in the Mezene, and near the mouth
of the Petchora. It is little esteemed, probably on account of its
great abundance. A child may easily, in a short winter's day, catch
1,500 by line. It is much esteemed in the interior of Russia. The
chemaia is found in the Seas of Azov and Caspian, and they are worth
,£175,000. They are prepared like red herrings, and are mostly
valued where they are caught. Them is also the sprat, which is pre-
pared in great quantities at Reval, seasoned with spice, and put in
little glass pots for sale. Mackerel are only found in the Black Sea,

I I 2 RUSSIAN

and are prepared and salted like herrings. Chub are the principal
fish of the Black Sea, and are taken in millions on the coast of the
Crimea and in the Dniester. They are prepered like red herrings,
and are worth £34,000.

The tarane, found in the Sea of Azov, may one day be
much valued. It belongs to the family of the cyprinoides, which
come up the Volga in the spring. They might be taken in immense
quantities if the larger fish did not monopolize the attention of the
fishermen. Now this fish is almost neglected, and only serves as
food for larger kinds of fish. There are only 2 kinds of purely salt-
water fish in Russia — the cod and herring. Before the commission
of inquiry into the fisheries of the north of Russia, it was supposed
that the rivers of Archangel were full of fish. But the Petchora fur-
nishes at the most only £17,000 worth of fish, and the Dwina, also
an immense river, does not produce enough for the population on its
banks. If it exports a few thousands of sterlets and a few
hundreds of pouds of salmon it imports some hundreds of thousands
of pouds (of 40 Ibs. each) of cod from Norway and Lapland. It is
still supposed that the rivers of Siberia abound with fish. We may
imagine that with the scarcity of population they are as well stocked
as it is possible for them to be. But the figures when looked into
seem insignificant. The district of Borayso, which extends over all
the lower course of the Obe, produces £16,000 worth offish, and
only 7,000 pouds (40 Ibs.) of sturgeon, or 28,000 Ibs. weight.

What is this compared with the Oural} a river which never ex-
ceeds in its lowest part 400 feet of width, but the produce of which
is no less than a million of roubles, 4,000,000 Ibs., — 100,000 pounds
of sturgeon, four million pounds ; or the Conra which pays to the
crown a rent of £59,250. It may be at once supposed that this
scarcity of the northern rivers, is owing to the great cold which is
unfavourable to the development of organic life ; but this cannot be
the principal or only cause. If we look south we shall fiud other
rivers, with the most favourable attributes for abounding with fish,
equally unproductive. The Danube, for instance, surpasses all but
the Volga in size, and apparently possesses every most favourable
condition, yet, notwithstanding, they import a great deal of fish,
and this even of the lowest quality (the taram). At tbe Delta of the
Danube belonging to Russia there are establishments for fishing like
those in the Caspian ; these only produce 30,000 pounds, or
120,000 Ibs. weight of sturgeon. Whilst there is as mnch produced
in one arm of the Couban (the Potoka) which is only 200 feet wide,
and 9 versts in length.

The Nile, Ganges, or Mississippi must produce fejv fish, as the
countries, through which they flow, import fish from Newfoundland,
Norway, &c. It is owing to the great freshwater lakes that the
Russian rivers are so productive. A river in itself cannot produce
the same quantity of fish as those which flow into these lakes. The
Volga, for instance, including its delta and upper waters, is in all

FISHERIES. I I 3

1,500 square versts, or 30 geographical square miles, while the Cas-
pian Sea is at least 40 times this extent, or 36,000 square miles.

The principal engines of fishing are the lines, without
bait, and the pocket nets, two kinds which are used to catch 9-10ths
of all the fish in Russia. It is needless to describe the pocket net,
as it is much the same as that used in other countries ; but I must
say something in regard to the line, because in our belief it is only
used in the Caspian, and Sea of Azov. This apparatus consists in a
line of 50 fathoms in length, to which are attached at the distance
of 10 or 12 inches lines with hooks at the end of different sizes
according to the fish for which they are used. They are placed in
the sea or rivers so that the hooks float at some distance from the
bed. These hooks are used without bait, and the fish are caught by
chance as they come in contact with the hooks.

The lower part of the Oural and the adjacent sea belongs to the
Cossacks, 80,000 souls. They consider it the property of their
army, received from the Governmect for military services. The
fisheries, therefore, have fixed regulations, which are seldom altered.
Each man possesses certain rights to the fishery, according to his
military rank. The fishing is principally carried on in the winter, cold
being favourable to the transport of the fish. There are 16 fishing
stations, and the most systematic order is observed in their working.
Those fish which ascend the Oural in autumn in great quantities do
not return to the sea the same year, but remain to winter in the
river, if they are not disturbed. When the water begins to get
colder they seek the deep basins, called yatoves, where they pass the
winter under the ice, in a kind of dormant state. To en-
courage this peculiarity in the fish, the Cossacks have always not
only forbidden any fishing in summer, but take the utmost care that
they shall not be disturbed. No one is allowed to cross the rivers in
boats except in urgent need, horses and cattle may not water in the
river, and no one is allowed to shoot, and even lights in the windows
at night are forbidden. Steamboats have to stop at the mouths of
the rivers, and even in the coasting trade, which the Cossacks carry
on with Astrakan, the vessels were obliged to enter a harbour some
distance from the rivers mouth. Thus the Oural river is entirely
devoted to fishing.

In some of the Cossack villages an old man is appointed as guar-
dian of the Oural. He must observe the fish closely in order to
discover the number in such and such a yatove. These men acquire
such experience that they not only can tell the different kinds of fish
but even their sex.

There are two modes of catching the fish. In the lower part of
the Oural, the fishing begins in the month of of October, All who
are going to take part in the fishing assemble on the 1st in the vil-
lage of Antonooskaid, from which place they commence. They
number of the fishermen is 8,000, with 3,000 little boats. The
instruments used for this kind of fishing is a kind of bag-net, seven

114 RUSSIAN

fathoms wide, with two wings, upper and lower. They drag this
along the bed of the river by means of two boats. Fishing begins at
sunrise, and continues till the distance determined on is fished. The
day after is spent in selling the fish to the numerous merchants who
follow the fisherman, and who prepare the fish in different ways. In
the upper part of the Oural fishing is only carried on in winter,
when the river is covered with ice. They fish here also in parties,
and the only instrument used is a hook. This is very large and
made of steel, with a wooden handle which may be lengthened ac-
cording to the depth of the water. Sometimes it is as much as 63
feet in length (!) fathoms). In order to keep it vertical, in the
current there is besides a weight attached to the hook, sometimes
40 Ibs. in weight.

This mode of fishing commences at 10 o'clock in the morning, as
the fishermen have to assemble in their sledges from the surrounding
villages. The most profound silence is observed. A cannon is
fired as the signal, when each man runs on to the ice, and piercing
holes in the ice plunge their hooks into the water. The holes are
generally a foot or 14 inches in diameter, In a few minutes the ice
is pierced with holes like a sieve. By this time the hitherto half
dormant fish, frightened by the noise, begin to move about, and, of
course, soon get hooked.

When a man feels that a sturgeon is on his hook, he draws it
gently up. This is not difficult with the fish in its half torpid state.
Sometimes, however, it happens that an enormous sturgeon is
hooked of the weight of twentymo fifty pouds, 800 Ibs. to 2,000
each. He then calls his comrades to help him, as the hole must
probably be widened. Sometimes the ice gives way after fresh
holes are made, and they become too numerous. This is the
favourite mode of fishing with the cossacks. The river is open to
the poorest, it only requires a man to possess a hook, a sledge, -and
some provisions of oatmeal — the fish itself being too dear. There is
also a great deal of hazard connected with it. It is a kind of
lottery in which a man may gain more than ,£"16 10s. in a quarter of
an hour. The value of the last-named fisheries is about .£50,000 a-
year. The revenue which the Russian Government derives from its
fisheries is 800 to 900,000 roubles, and, adding to this what is derived
from the tax on salt used in the preparation of fish, the amount may
be reckoned at .€333,300. The cost of the Oural fisheries, inclu-
ding nets, boats, &c., is not less thao .£29,150. The fish is pre-
served in three different ways — by freezing, salting, and drying.
The Oural produces £87,000 worth of fish in ice, and £95,830
of salted fish. In these large establishments the sturgeon fish is
placed in large caves, which are sometimes hollowed out of the hills,
and form long corridors frequently 100 fathoms in length supported
by wooden columns. On the floor of these passages and piled up
by the walls are large cases filled with fish. They often contain
from 40 to 100,000.

FISHERIES. I I 5

Besides these methods some kinds of fish are smoked — as, for
instance, a small kind of herring.

The sturgeon is prepared in another manner, called en balyk.
The back of the fish is dried and salted, afterwards coloured with
saltpetre, and flavoured with pepper, cloves, and laurel leaves. It is
highly valued when thus prepared, as the process is difficult and does
not always succeed. It sells for £'6 for 40 Ibs. weight in the places
where it is made.

The other products of the sturgeon are caviar, isinglass, and
vesiga. Caviar is the roe of the sturgeon, and is of two kinds —
liquid and solid — according to the manner of preparation. The
liquid caviar is the most highly prized, and is, therefore, prepared in.
the largest quantities. The best is made in Astrakhan, and is sold
there, at wholesale price for as much as £5 for 40 Ibs., while at
Moscow and Petersbourg the retail price is about 3s. 4d. a pound-
The solid caviar is not worth so much. Isinglass is obtained from
the swimming bladder of the sturgeon. This vessel is well soaked
in water to get rid of all the fat and useless matter. It is there
separated from its skin, and dried in rolls. When dry it is done up
in bundles for sale. The best is known under the name of patriarch,
because it is prepared in the fisheries which belong to the patriarch
of Moscow, just as the convent of Solovetsky provides the
best herrings from the Baltic. The preparation called vesiga is
made from the substance contained in the backbone of the sturgeon.
It is in the form of a long riband, and is thus dried for sale. It is a
great delicacy, eaten in pat£s, and sometimes with the flesh of the
fish itself, and is sold for £3 : 6s. for 40 Ibs. weight. Of this about
28,000 Ibs. is sold. The last product worthy of mention from the
different kinds of fish is oil, the value of which is .£83,300. It is
employed for many uses — for manufactures, medicine, and food. lu
some fish it is only found in the liver, while in others it is procured
from all parts of the body. The method of preparing medicinal oil
from the liver of the cod was first discovered in Norway, but they
are now able to make it in Lapland, and as a proof of their success
14,000 Ibs. of cod liver-oil have been ordered from our fishery here
for use in the military hospitals. The livers are prepared by means
of hot water, and sometimes by the heat of the sun, which dissolves
the oil and separates it from the useless matter. That which is made
from whole fish is prepared differently. This method is very waste-
ful, as much of the fish does not produce oil. , Herrings have been
principally used until lately, as there was formerly a great prejudice
in Russia against their being consumed as food. Unhappily, though
this prejudice has almost died out, a hundred millions of herrings aro
still used for the extraction of oil every year.

The sea mammals constitute another important branch of Russian
commerce, which equals at least £S3,300. Besides those caught in
the northern seas there is a species of seal found in the Caspian, and
in the mouths of the Volga and Oural. In the principal centre of

Il6 RUSSIAN

this fishery upwards of 100,000 seals are caught annually. In one
night of 1846 they killed 1,300 seals on an island near the mouth of
the Oural. They are taken in three ways — on the islands, by means
of nets, and in winter on the ice.

In the Caspian Sea, they hunt the seals on the islands. They
land in boats while the seals are basking in the sun, and surround
them so that they have no chance of escape, killing them with large
cudgels. In this manner 10,000 seals are taken in one day. They
then cut off the head, skin the seal — the fat adhering to the inner
part of the skin. The bodies are buried, or are taken some distance
and thrown into the sea. When not prejudicial to the other fishe-
ries the seals are also caught in nets. Hunting seals in the Caspian
in winter has lately been forbidden, as the young ones were killed in
great quanties, on account of their thick, silken furs, which being
white dyed easily, and the seals would have been exterminated.

Seals abound in much greater quantities in the WhitevSea, but,
nevertheless, there is not half the quantity of oil produced as in the
Caspian, on account of the greater difficulty in catching them, or
rather in transporting the bodies and skins of the animals. The
hunters have to take boats and provisions with them, and, in some
parts, when the seals are on the moving icebergs, and have to be
hunted and killed there, the chase is very hazardous, as it is difficult to
tell where the wiud may carry the iceberg ; if it should be towards
the ocean the hunters may perish from cold and want of food. They
have then no chance but to embark in their slight boats and seek
the land. In this chase they shoot the seals, and the men must be
very clever shots, for if a seal should only be wounded it utters a
cry which alarms the whole herd. Neither the discharge of guns,
nor yet the dead bodies of their companions can frighten the seal
like this cry which will at once spoil the whole chase.

There is also a kind of dolphin of great size, and some importance
importance in the White Sea, where it is caught for the sake of its
oil, in large nets of thick cord. This fish is sometimes three or four
fathoms in length. The morse or bearded seal is caught near Nova-
Zembla. It is valued for its skin and teeth, besides the oil it pro-
duces, but it is caught in small numbers. The mode of extracting
the oil from the skins of these animals is to expose them in the sun,
when the oil trickles from them, and this produced is of the finest
quality. In one large establishment in Astrakhan 400,000 Ibs. of
oil are annually produced. The total value of Russian products
from the sea mammals cannot be less than .£"83,300.

March 2 1, 1868.

My dear Sir, — We have no certain data on which to offer a reliable
estimate of the total quantities and value of the fish annually caught
in the seas of the United Kingdom. I have prepared and sent you

FISHERIES.

117

the nearest approach to it that I can glean from all the sources of in-
formation on the subject within my reach.
Believe me,

Yours very truly,

JAMES CAIRD,

Chief Commissioner appointed to investigate the
state of the British sea fisheries.

Estimated weight and value of sea fish annually caught in the
British seas : —

120,000 tons of White fish, at £20 per ton

250,000
20,000
20,009
3,006
12,000
20,000

Herrings, at £15
Mackerel, at £15
Sprats, at £7 IOS.
Pilchards, at £16 los.
Oysters, at ,£20 los.
other shell fish at £5

445,000

The river fisheries — salmon, trout, eels : —
England
Ireland ... ... ...

Scotland

£2,400,000

3,750,000.

300,000.

150,000.

50,000.

250,000.

100,000.

£7,000,000.

£30,000
330,000
200,000

560,000
£7,560,000

Having endeavoured to give some information relative to the
Salmon Fisheries of England and Wales, and some further informa-
tion relative to the fisheries of America, Frarce, Norway,
and Russia, it might be both interesting and valuable to give in
conclusion the following statistics of the annual produce of all the
fisheries : —

Fisheries in Norway ... ... •«•• ...

Fisheries in Russia, as follows : — s

Caspian Sea, with the Volga, Oural, &c., £1,837,500

700,000
218,758
175,000
105,000
338,750

£2,000,000

Sea of Azov

Baltic

White sea and Arctic Ocean ...

Black Sea...

Lakes and rivers of the interior of Russia

According to the account published by Messrs. Audin
and Milne Edwards, the produce of the sea fisheries
of France is estimated at

The fisheries of Newfoundland extend over an area of
about 600 miles by 200 miles, and belong to England,
France, and America, and are estimated to produce
about 270 million Ibs. amounting to
L 2

£3,500,000

£520,000

£1,480,000

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