Which enters the Tay about two miles above
Perth, in dry weather contains no water for the
last four miles of its natural course, the water
being all carried away by an artificial aqueduct
—supposed to have been made by the Romans
—for the supply of the town of Perth.

This river has a great extent of fine spawning-ground,
and when in flood an immense number
of spawning-fish make their way up it. It is
of no value whatever as a fishing river; clean
fish never enter it during the fishing season; it
is, like many of the smaller tributaries, a purely
breeding stream.

It is doubtful if any of the fish which enter
this stream ever come out again alive. They are
all killed, either at the mill-dams or on the
shallow spawning-beds; many of them force their
way into small rivulets where there is hardly
sufficient water to cover them, and whence the
country people hook them out. Though barely
eatable, they are better than nothing. The
excuse for this, as in all similar circumstances,
is this: " We never see clean fish, and we
must just take them when we can get them."
These people can hardly be called regular
poachers; they see large fish floundering about,
and it is a difficult thing to persuade them that
they have not as much right to them as the
people living near the mouth of the river.

Why allow salmon to enter this River Almond
at all? Why not erect a cruive or trap at or
near its junction with the Tay, and arrest
every fish, take their spawn, and hatch it in
an apparatus, as at Stormontfield? Very few
of them would be in a ripe spawning condition,
but that is of no consequence; for Mr.
Buist has proved beyond dispute that they may
be kept in confinement until they are ripe. A
great proportion of the fry now in the protecting
ponds at Stormontfield, are the produce of this
experiment. Were the plan to be adopted,
there can be little doubt that more salmon than
the whole of the present take of the Tay, could
be raised from the fish which are now entirely
wasted in this one stream.

The number of salmon any given river may
be made to produce, if not unlimited, is limited
only to the quantity of fry it can sustain. For,
if we provide food and protection for the young
fish until they emigrate—at which time they do
not weigh more than an ounce—we have not
only done all that we can do, but all that is
necessary to be done. After that, each fish goes
beyond our control, and we see it no more until
it returns to us a grilse, or full-grown salmon;
it requires nothing further at our hands, for it
requires no food in its adult state in fresh water.

There is no greater enemy to the fry as it
emerges from the spawning-bed, than the fry of
the preceding year. In consequence of their
cannibal-like propensity, it was found impossible
to keep the broods of two different seasons in the
same pond; the fry of one year devouring the
brood of the succeeding year the instant it
entered the pond. In order to propagate every
year, there must be at least two store ponds.
There are two at Stormontfield now; at first
there was only one, in consequence of which the
ova boxes were idle every alternate year. This
is a great advantage of artificial culture—for no
doubt the fish in the river have the same cannibal
propensity; we can keep them and feed
them till they put on their silvery vests, and
go off like gentlemen to see the world.

All the tributaries which yield no clean fish,
should be treated artistically, and even those
which yield only a few, should not be overlooked.
The River Earn, a large and important affluent,
yields a rental of about four hundred pounds a
year; of the number of fish which pass up it for
breeding purposes, we have no knowledge, but
it must be very considerable, for we once saw
forty fish, averaging twenty pounds each, taken
out at one haul of a net, for experimental
purposes. They were none of them forward
enough, and were all returned to the river.
About one-half of these fish were females, and
would each deposit twenty thousand eggs—
20 x 20,000=100,000. These fish were but a
very small part of the breeding-fish in this river
—a mere drop in the bucket—and would not
have been missed had they all been destroyed;
yet from the ova of these few fish, if carefully
treated, four thousand pounds' worth of
fish could most certainly have been raised. The
river is a good deal poached in its upper part,
but if it were not, there are enough pike in it
to demolish the fry from forty times four
hundred thousand ova. The river swarms with
them, but they are never fished for; it wouldn't
pay; they bring hardly anything in the market.
Burglars and thieves are not generally of much
value, but we do not, for that reason, allow
them to go at large and prey upon the public.

The great stumbling-block in the way of
salmon culture, is the divided interest of the
various proprietors. What, for instance, is the
inducement for the cultivation of this River Earn?
The fish might be increased a hundred-fold,
and would be all taken on their return from the
sea by the proprietors of the fisheries between
the sea and the junction of the Earn with the
Tay. No good can be done until all the
proprietors form themselves into a joint-stock
company, and this could not be effected without an
act of parliament; for there would be some selfish
individuals who would not join, in the hope of
reaping the benefit of the labour of others.

We cannot quit the subject without alluding
to the stake and bag-nets used for the capture
of salmon on the sea-coast. It can be of little
consequence to the consumer where or how the
fish are taken, if only they are sent to
market in their best condition. As to the
proprietors themselves, the less the cost of catching
the better for them. These matters, however,
are never referred to in the numerous
acts of parliament. There is only one question,
and that is, to whom do they belong? and
consequently who has the right of taking
them? The river proprietors say, " We breed
the fish; you sea-fishers have no right in them."
The sea-fishers may, with equal propriety, assert
that they are sea fish, and that, except in their