all the salmon, and a the same time large enough
to allow pike, perch, and river trout—the vermin
which prey on salmon fry—to escape. It is a
plan for preserving vermin, and answers its
purpose admirably.

Let us suppose that we have a river with a
gravelly bottom, but destitute of fish of any
kind. Let us further suppose that we stock
it with twelve thousand salmon ova, and then
leave it to take its chance. Something like the
following results would ensue. The ova would
hatch in April or May: at least all those not
destroyed by the larvae of insects, or picked
up by diving birds; very shortly, fish of
prey would make their appearance, and the
worst of these, in the early stages of the life of
the recently hatched fry, is the common river
trout; then would come perch and pike, eels,
&c. These latter, by the way, are, as Mr. Willet
would observe, "hard to tackle," for as they
travel overland with as much facility as through
water, there is no possibility of keeping them
out of any place where there is anything to eat.
After the different kinds of vermin have been
feeding on the fry for twelve months, about
one-half of the remnant of the stock would
suddenly put on a silvery vestment, get together
in a small shoal, and depart on their travels.
They would make their way to the sea, and
return—about five percent of them—to your
river in eight or ten weeks, having grown in
that short space of time to the weight of six or
seven pounds. It must be remarked that they
would not weigh more than an ounce when they
went away, and would have taken twelve months
to arrive even at that weight. The remaining
half would, if not devoured by their enemies,
remain twelve months longer, and then proceed
to sea as their brothers and sisters had done
before them.

And now when they begin to return in the
shape of grilse, six or seven pounds in weight,
we set to work with our parliamentary net, two
inches square in the mesh, and kill every grilse.
And we keep on killing, until stopped by act
of parliament.

If we are to increase our stock of salmon,
it must be by protecting the eggs and fry.
This, with the exception of the experiment at
Stormontfield, has never yet been tried; and it
is not difficult to see how, out of our twelve
thousand ova, we can rear no more than five
or six fish for the table.

Let us suppose that, instead of neglecting
the fry in our river for the whole two years of
their childhood, we had, from the time they were
a few weeks old, commenced netting the river
with a small meshed net: a net not more than
an inch square in the mesh; suppose we had
dragged it wherever a fish was likely to be, and
killed everything which could not pass through
this inch mesh; we could not possibly do any
harm to the salmon fry, for they could at all times
easily pass through; and everything which could
not pass through, would, most certainly not be
a young salmon, and if not a salmon, would, as
certainly, be a fish which preyed upon salmon
fry, and ought to be kept out of every salmon
river.

This dragging of the river should never cease,
in season or out of season, while there is a head
of vermin to be caught; of course avoiding the
spawning-beds; there are hundreds of holes and
corners where predatory fish lurk, and which are
but little frequented by adult salmon. Any
stray fish taken in the close time can always be
returned to the river uninjured.

Small meshed nets cannot very well be used
in large and heavy water, but this is of little
consequence, for it is not there that we expect
to meet with fry-eating vermin. These must be
looked for in the breeding tributaries chiefly,
especially in any eddies or dead water at their
lower part, near their junction with the main
river; there the deadly pike lurks and destroys
thousands of smolts as they descend towards
the sea. Pike of large size are seldom taken in
the main river. This is easily accounted for.
The main stream is netted hourly, day and
night, and consequently every fish of two pounds
and upwards is captured; but in the tributaries
it is different; these are netted only occasionally,
and at stations widely apart, when salmon are
supposed to be on the run. There are long
stretches of nearly still water, precisely suitable
to the habits of the pike; these never have
a net in them, for the reason that salmon are
not likely to be taken there; as for pike, river
trout, and other voracious fish, no one ever
dreams of fishing for them; they are not worth
taking; they bring next to nothing in the
market. If a gameKeeper were to disregard the
various kinds of vermin on his ground for the
simple reason that he could not sell them, we
should conclude he had taken leave of his senses.

Of the fish bred at Stormontfield and turned
into the river, four per cent were known to be
recaptured as grilse, the same season. We say
known, advisedly, because such was the unreasoning
prejudice of the fishermen against the experiment,
that it was only from two or three stations
that any return was made, and Mr. Buist
declined to register any fish unless it actually
passed through his hands. After protecting the
fry for one and two years, four per cent does not
appear at first sight to be a very large return;
but it must be remembered that in the natural
state of things only one-half of a fish is produced
from one thousand ova, and allowing that half
the ova used in the experiment is wasted, we
still have twenty fish for each thousand ova—an
increase of forty-fold. Of how many fish
returned after the fishings closed, or how many
may have remained in the sea to return as
spring fish, we have no knowledge.

Although the instinct of the fish is sufficient
at all times to continue the species, it is by no
means sufficient to prevent them from making
many mistakes. They often deposit their eggs
in shallow water when the river is in flood;
these are left dry, and perish when the water
subsides. But the greatest destruction of fish,
fry, and ova, takes place in the small affluents.
The Almond, for instance, a mountain stream