or the purpose of ascertaining whether
they eat spawn or not, and he found its crop quite full of spawn.
With regard to the aquatic larvae of insects, Mr. Horsfall may
easily satisfy himself that they destroy spawn if he will turn
some into an artificial spawning bed. One of my friends failed to
hatch his Trout ova because he could not keep out the fresh-water
shrimps.

Mr. Horsfall seems to think that nature would be sufficient to
take care of her own interests if man did not step in to aid her
endeavours; but if he is a sportsman he no doubt has a game-
keeper, who not only preserves the ground from poachers, but traps
cats and weasels, shoots hawks, magpies and carrion crows, breeds
tame pheasants, and generally looks to the well being of the game
without trusting to the efforts of unassisted nature.

Let us take the second supposition, that there is no good in
artificial propagation when the fish which are sent to the sea can
never come back again by reason of insurmountable obstacles. If
Mr. Horsfall means this he is quite right; there is no good in the
upper proprietors of Salmon rivers becoming brood hens for the
owners of fisheries at the mouths of rivers or the proprietors of
impassable weirs, who take all the fish which get to the foot of
these weirs. I quite agree with Mr. Horsfall that it is in most
cases easy to build practicable fish passes, and at a slight
expense, if people were willing to do so; but I wish to show that
notwithstanding the boasted effects of the Act of 1861, the upper
riparian proprietors have not a sufficient inducement to build
fish passes, and will not do so unless the expense can be made
very moderate indeed.

I will take the river Ribble to illustrate my meaning. As a
general rule we have no fresh run Salmon until May, and the upper
proprietors are supposed to have a sufficient share of the fish
that ascend the stream if the owners of the fisheries in the
estuary and the tidal part of the river cease to net from six
o'clock on the Saturday night to six o'clock on the Monday
morning. That is a day and a half per week. The fishing for Salmon
(except angling) ceases on the 31st of August, and from the 1st of
May to the 31st of August there are 123 days. Call the period
eighteen weeks, which gives us twenty-seven days during which time
the Salmon have liberty to pass to the upper parts of the river.
But on the average of seasons, owing to droughts, the rapid
absorption of moisture