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come sea-trout and gilse, and in the following summer or autumn, salmon, from ten to near twenty pounds' weight.""

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"From the experiments I have tried from the month of May 1812, nearly to the present time, compared with those of Messrs. Ralph and Barnes, that question is now nearly at rest in this country. I have tried various experiments with fry and whitings, or salmon-peal, for several years, to ascertain whether or no they become salmon, and by what stages, from which, I am now perfectly satisfied, that they do become salmon in the course of two years or thereabouts; for, in the month of May 1812, I put a great number of salmon fry into a bleachfind basin on the river at Milbeck, near Carlisle, which now supplies our canal to the sea with water. In the latter end of that year, those FRY became tolerably well-sized WHITINGS, and measured thirteen inches in length; and in the following season became SEA-TROUT, small gilse, and one of them continued in the basin until it was twenty-six inches and a quarter in length. On the 16th of August, 1813, I put twelve whitings into the same basin, first cutting the dead fin off the back to distinguish them from the fry, and on the 3d of June, 1814, I had the pond drawn with a small net, and upwards of twenty fish taken to the shore in the presence of scores of fishermen and others, when it appeared to all present, that the whitings and many of the fry put in, in May 1812, had fairly become sea-trouts, and some of them forktailed, resembling a small gilse; several of the fish continued in the pond for two or three years afterwards, and actually spawned; but the Bleachy having failed and gone into Lancashire, the banks which confined them were broken by idle persons, and the fish escaped into the Eden. Whether this experiment may satisfy the people in Devon, I know not, but, at present, we are pretty well convinced here as to what whiting or salmon-peal are; in fact, they become salmon.

"In the year 1819, a number of whitings were marked at King Garth on Eden, by cutting off the dead fin and sloping their tails, and on the 27th of July, 1820, one of them was again taken there a large gilse, weighing nine pounds.""

We have dwelt somewhat at length upon this point, because it is an interesting subject connected with natural history; and establishes our position, that these fish, being young and unsizeable salmon, ought not to be allowed to be taken.

There is good reason to believe that the salmon pairs, and is not polygaminous; and this is an important circumstance to bear in mind, when we are enquiring into the causes of its scarcity, as we shall find that the practice of destroying nearly all the kippers, or male fish, when they are ascending the rivers, must be the means of rendering abortive a great part of the ova deposited by the females. We regret that our limits will not permit us to lay before our readers a number of curious facts upon this point, all tending to demonstrate, as

far as the difficulties of the subject will permit, that the salmon does pair, and that the presence of the kipper at the shedding of the spawn is absolutely necessary to its productiveness. We may also remark, that the period for which rivers are put in defence, or what is called the close time, is far too short: the object of placing the rivers in defence is, that the fish may not be obstructed in depositing the spawn, as, during the fence-days, it is unlawful to take or destroy any salmon whatever. As the law now stands, almost every separate river is closed at a separate time, and for various periods, some so short as six weeks, although breeding fish begin to ascend the rivers full of spawn by the beginning of October, continue to spawn till January, and do not make their appearance in a healthy state before the middle of March.

Great quantities of salmon are destroyed by the spear during close-time, and incredible slaughter is made among the breeding fish by the idle and dissolute, who follow these illegal practices in open day, and without any sort of apprehension. The same destructive system is pursued, with even greater success, by night poachers, who allure the fish to a particular spot by means of a light, where they are transfixed with the greatest certainty, and one common fate awaits the sound, the breeding, and the spent fish: but, supposing the spawn to be safely buried in the sand, it is raked up and destroyed by drag-nets, which are suffered to sweep over the ground and uncover it; and with these small-meshed dragnets the fry and unsizeable fish are taken; and such as cannot be sold are used to feed hogs, or converted into manure. The large salmon have also very formidable enemies in the porpoise and the otter, the latter being a most wanton slaughterer, and hunting for mere amusement with the greatest avidity; while the former are alike formidable from their rapacity and numbers. John Halliday, who was examined before a Committee of the House of Commons, states, that "there are more salmon destroyed by grampuses, porpoises, and seals, than by all the fishers in England; that they hunt in packs, and that he has seen 3 or 400 porpoises at a time go up and down with the tide." It has been said, that the use of lime in agriculture has contributed to destroy the salmon, but we are convinced this is an erroneous opinion. Undoubtedly, lime is highly pernicious to fish ; but it can very rarely be washed off land into rivers, even by the heaviest rains, in a state to destroy them. When exposed to the air on the surface of the ground, surrounded, as it usually is, with decaying vegetable matter, it very soon becomes saturated with carbonic acid gas, and being then in the state of chalk,

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it is nearly innoxious. In proof of this, we may observe, that lime is equally destructive to all other kinds of fish, which continue to swarm in streams deserted by the salmon. We rather think that this cause has been started by some interested persons, for the purpose of blinding the eyes of the public, and diverting their attention from the real and substantial to the plausible and imaginary; particularly as we find, from the Minutes of Evidence before the Committee already referred to, that it is frequently alluded to by persons who are the proprietors of weirs, fish-locks, and other devices for the capture of salmon, which are not only illegal in themselves, and injurious to the public, but will eventually prove so to the individuals to whom they belong. We are not surprised to find these gentlemen going out of their way for the purpose of stigmatizing the amusement of angling, enumerating it among the modes of taking fish which ought to be abolished. Perhaps we may feel a little prejudice on this subject, but it does appear to us an innocent, healthy, and delightful recreation; nor are we afraid of drawing towards us the smile of contempt in this intellectual age, when we declare, that some of the happiest moments which we have ever enjoyed have been passed in this very practice.

What we are told of the angler taking generally unsizeable and unseasonable fish, scarcely deserves an answer, as every sportsman knows that, if he understands his art, he is in more danger of having his tackle run away with by a powerful fish, than his patience exhausted in hooking the fry. The angler fishes for sport; and, as there is none in taking small fish, he will adopt measures to prevent them from getting at his hook: but it is not so with the fisherman who lives by his art; to him, the homely proverb, "That it is all fish that comes to the net," literally applies; for, however unsizeable or unseasonable they may be, they will fetch something: and, although the laws are theoretically severe, he looks upon them as intended" for terror, not for use," and gives himself no further trouble about them. We ourselves have seen fish carried about the streets of the metropolis, and offered for sale at a low price, even under the very eye of justice, which were taken in the Thames with illegal nets, and were not wholesome, being at once unsizeable and unseasonable. We cheerfully excuse the proprietors of fisheries for raising a senseless cry, echoed only by the selfish and the tasteless, against the amusement of angling; knowing that it neither accords with the interest of the one, nor suits the inclination of the other.

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We are now brought to the great cause of the scarcity of salmon, and to which all those before mentioned are but

VOL. III. PART II.

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"dust in the balance." Let our readers (bearing in mind the migration of salmon,) conceive the effect of building a weir directly across a river, by which the stream is made to pass through; a contrivance which detains, at pleasure, every fish in its passage up and down. Let him take his stand upon this weir, and view the unavailing efforts of the fish to leap over this wall of masonry; the attempt is repeated again and again, till, incumbered with its productive load, it sinks tired and exhausted, and is either pierced by the spearer, who takes his stand for the purpose, or, if it escape impalement, is compelled to deposit its ova below the weir, often in the tideway, where it all becomes abortive; but if, by means of a flood, or some desperate effort, the obstacle is overcome, its return to the sea is entirely cut off by the same means, and it pines away, becoming not only unwholesome if taken, but utterly disgusting, and even poisonous and yet there is scarcely a salmon-stream in England which is not incumbered by these and similar devices, by which the avarice of individuals is made injurious to the public.

Such being the causes of the scarcity of salmon, it is no difficult matter to point out the remedies, though it is by no means an easy task to apply them. In the first place, extend the close-time from the end of October to the middle of March; let the numerous local, and, in many cases, contradictory statutes be consolidated into one, which shall apply equally to all parts of the kingdom; protect the fish with the greatest care during the prohibited season; suffer no illegal nets to be used, nor unsizeable fish to be taken; under severe penalties, prevent the indiscriminate slaughter of the kippers; destroy the shoals of porpoises* which infest the mouths of our rivers, whose blubber would nearly repay the expense, and the difference, if any, might be made up by a premium. Fix a price, and a liberal one, upon the head of an otter; but, above all other measures, remove every obstruction to the passage of the breeding fish up the rivers, and their return to the sea: suffer no mill-wheel to remain without a grating, the bars of which shall be at least as small as the space between the paddle and the floor of the lock, which would save the numbers of fine fish destroyed in endeavouring to pass under the wheel: permit no fish-locks, coops, nor any standing device, for insnaring fish, to be erected or continued, under heavy penalties; and let every weir, that shall be permitted to remain,

*It is a well-ascertained fact, that the salmon forms the chief, if not the only, food of these monsters: they are frequently seen to leap from the water in their endeavours to escape, and are sure to be caught in the jaws of their relentless pursuers, whose stomach is always full of them.

have a shuttle or free passage in the middle of the stream, to be opened once a-day all the year, and to continue open while the rivers are in defence: let summary modes for punishing offenders be substituted for the circuitous, intricate, and expensive means, which are now resorted to for enforcing the laws, and which, by deterring prosecutors, have given impunity to offenders. When these or similar measures are taken, and the conservators are enabled to discharge their duty efficiently, we shall have salmon speedily as plentiful as ever it was; till then, we may in vain expect the evil to

cease.

The author of the work before us is a practical and experienced man, well acquainted with his subject, and zealous in the public cause; and to those who read for information, and value a book more for what it contains than for the manner in which it is communicated, we can recommend a perusal of the work itself, which will amply repay their trouble.

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The Night before the Bridal, a Spanish Tale. Sappho, a Dramatic Sketch, and other Poems. By Catharine Grace Garnett. 8vo. pp. 220. London, Longman and Co. 1824. THESE are sad days, said we, for the supremacy of man, with a sigh that anticipated departing greatness; and we looked up, as if mechanically, at the female department of our library: for we have felt seriously on the alarming spirit of rivalry displayed in this the latter day, by the weaker, and heretofore considered, less intellectual sex. We gazed mournfully at the shelves groaning with the weight of female wisdom, and gave back a long look of regret into the (for us) happy past, when silence, like chastity, was held one of the fairest gifts of woman. But, alas! that age has long gone by; and, since those silly fellows-the poets have taken it into their ridiculous fancies to praise their silver-toned voices, taciturnity, has become a crime; and the gift of tongues has almost driven out connubial felicity. But some of the luckless fraternity having ventured to bind themselves to those voices for life, have at last discovered the mistake; and have been fain to counteract their former erroneous similes, by introducing other less delicate figures. Hence the clacking of mills, bell-clappers, with various comparisons of an equally dissonant and incessant nature.

But of this we would not have complained: had we lost our

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