the race-course, hunted and hooted by everybody,
without thinking of the salmon. Parliament, as
will be seen hereafter, is about to intrude itself,
like a policeman into a riot, and will shortly
endeavour to settle all the suicidal disputes. In
the mean time, a number of influential gentlemen,
proprietors of fisheries, scientific men, and others,
have formed themselves, under the able presidency
of Lord Saltoun, into an "Association for
the Preservation of the Fisheries of Great Britain
and Ireland;" and diligent, and sharp-eyed fish-
lawyers, who colled the facts to go into the
High Court of Parliament before the cause
comes on, have been doing their best. They
have classified the causes of the decrease of
salmon given and amplified under five heads as
above ; they have also discovered that neighbours,
the French, are so mightily fond of British
salmon that they will eat them when out of
season. British poachers will therefore catch
them out of season.* The association, therefore,
boldly formed a deputation to Lord J. Russell,
in order to request him to use his influence with
the French government to stop the sale of
salmon at Paris during the British fence months.
Lord Saltoun stated that it was found that
during the fence months (about twenty weeks)
not less than fifty tons of foul fish were exported
to Paris. Persons who had seen the contents of
these fish-boxes had described them as a mass of
putrefying garbage, with the spawn running out
all over the fish, oozing through the packages,
and utterly unfit for human food; and how the
French cooks managed to make them eatable he
could not imagine. They found, also, that on
many rivers in Devonshire the fry were taken
by bushels to be converted into sardines. Oh,
for the pen of Ovid to describe the process!

* A recruit from Berwick we lately medically
examined for the Life Guards, confessed to us that
his occupation had been of late spearing salmon in
the Tweed, and selling them at a high and
remunerative price for the French market.

We wish the association every support, and
it is certain the fish do.

Now, let us see what the salmon would do if
left alone. That the flesh of fish is admirably
suited to man's constitution there can be no
doubt; the various kinds of fish have been
analysed, and have been found to contain iodine.
Who ever saw the disease of goitre among
fishermen? Salmon fresh from the sea contain
a certain amount of iodine and a wonderfully
nutritious oil. He is the bacon pig among
fishes. Dead or alive he is "the king of the
fish." There are miracles still amongst us no
longer considered miracles because of daily
occurrence. The Great Distributor of his bountiful
gifts to man sends to the inhabitants of sandy
deserts flights of locusts and of quails; he sends
to us "of the isles" the produce of the vast
expanse of waters, which would otherwise be a
real desert. What can the reflecting man call
the annual self-sown, self-presented harvest of
the herring, of the cod, of the mackerel, and of
the royal fish the salmon, but a standing
miracle? What the herring does now, the
salmon would do if left alone. There are spots
on the earth, where men are found few and far
between, in which salmon ore as plentiful as
herrings. At Petropaulovski, we read, they
come up the river in such thousands that their
dead bodies cause a plague. Crossing the
Rocky Mountains, a traveller came to a pool
literally alive with salmon, as thick in it as
tadpoles in a puddle. Suppose England to be
depopulated for a few years, doubtless our salmon
rivers would assume the same appearance. This
fish is a very self-preserving fellow, his instincts
are strong, his bodily powers great to carry out
his instincts; he will charge the fierce and
boiling stream, he will rush at a cataract like a
thorough-bred steeple-chase horse, returning to
the charge over and over again, like a true
British fish as he is. And what is all this for?
His instinct compels him to ascend in order to
place the eggs in a position favourable for their
development, and where they shall, in due season,
become young fish. Arrived at a suitable
place, the female fish makes a nest—not an
elaborate one, certainly—but the word egg
implies the word nest, and Madame Salmon
deposits her eggs in a nest of shingle and gravel.
Birds, for the most part, consider it their duty
to sit patiently upon their eggs. Not so the
fish. The matronly barn-door hen superintends
a nursery of from twelve to eighteen young
chicks, but imagine any living female beast, bird,
or fish presenting at one and the same time
some twenty thousand tiny images of their dear
mamma. Yet this is a fact: it has been
ascertained and calculated, both at home and abroad,
that "for every pound weight a fish produces
one thousand eggs;" and fish of twenty pounds
weight not unfrequently spawn in our rivers.
The mother fish, therefore, we may imagine,
foreseeing the trouble that such a numerous
family would be likely to entail, just gives them
one fond look, turns tail, and leaving them to
their little selves, goes away down into the sea
to recruit her strength. Then come the
persecutors of the orphan eggs; trout,* eels, water-
ouzels and other birds, and all sorts of minute
water creatures, find out the nest, and show as
much mercy on them as does the old carrion
crow to an unprotected nest of pheasants.
Some, however, escape, and then these orphan
youngsters have to begin their sad experiences
of life, and a general massacre of the innocents
takes place by enemies both on land and in the
water.

* "We lately saw ten full-grown smelts cut out
of the stomach of a yellow trout of one and a half
pounds weight. Out of the stomachs of similar
marauders from five hundred to six hundred ova
have been taken, the result of a single meal."—The
Field, May 25, 1861.

These natural hinderances to the too great
increase of salmon would be all right and proper
if man did not interfere, for there would be too
many salmon, bnt when man claims his share of
the spoil the caudle is burnt at both ends, and