, all natural
salmon rivers may be kept thoroughly stocked with this fish, and rivers
that have been depleted, through any cause, brought back to their former
excellence.

I would instance the river Restigouche in support of the above
statement.

This river, which empties into the Bay of Chaleur, is now, and always
has been, the foremost salmon river in New Brunswick, both as to size
and number of fish. It has not a dam or obstruction to the free passage
of fish from its mouth to its source, yet up to 1868 and 1869 the
numbers of salmon had constantly decreased. This, no doubt, was
occasioned by excessive netting at the mouth, and spearing the fish
during the summer in the pools; natural production was not able to keep
up with this waste.

In the year 1868 the number of salmon was so small that the total catch
by anglers was only 20 salmon, and the commercial yield only 37,000
pounds. At about this date, the first salmon hatchery of the Dominion
was built upon this river and a better system of protection inaugurated;
every year since some hundreds of thousands of young salmon have been
hatched and placed in these waters, and the result has been, that in
1878 one angler alone (out of hundreds that were fishing the river)
in sixteen days killed by his own rod eighty salmon, seventy-five of
which averaged over twenty-six pounds each; while at the same time the
numbers that were being taken by the net fishermen below, for commercial
purposes, were beyond precedent, amounting in that one division alone
(not counting local and home consumption) to the enormous weight of
500,000 pounds, and the cash receipts for salmon in Restigouche County
that year amounted to more than $40,000, besides which some $5,000 was
expended by anglers; this result was almost entirely brought about by
artificial propagation. A new hatchery of size sufficient to produce
five million young fish annually will no doubt soon be erected by the
Dominion Government upon this river.

A somewhat similar record might be given of the river Saguenay. Some
years ago anglers and net fishers of this river said it was useless to
lease from the department, as the scarcity of salmon was such as not to
warrant the outlay. A hatchery was built, and this state of things is
now wonderfully changed; so much so, indeed, that in 1878 salmon, from
the great numbers which were taken at the tidal fisheries, became a drug
in the market, selling often as low as three cents p