The fact of salmon and trout devouring the spawn of their own kind has been already referred to, and unfortunately the practice is continued after the eggs are hatched. The big fish sometimes so terrify the tiny trout and samlets that the latter throw themselves clear out of the water and lay gasping on the pebbles, while the would-be devourer beats about the shallows disappointed at losing his prey. An old "kelt" salmon has been seen to devour fifty of his own progeny for breakfast; and the pike is a greater water-wolf still. This fish has been known to increase at the enormous rate of from eight to ten pounds a year when favourably placed for feeding. So voracious a creature is the pike, and furnished with such digestion, that it will destroy a half-pound trout a day for twelve months--a terrible drain upon any stream. Then it has an all-capacious maw for silvery smolts as they are making their way down to the sea, and of these at certain seasons it devours myriads. Of course pike keep coarse fish under, which are indirectly injurious to trout, and in this way confer a benefit upon the angler. There is another way in which he is beneficial, and that is as a scavenger. A diseased salmon or trout never lives more than a few minutes in his presence, for he gulps down fish, fungus, and all. In this connection there is one fact which ought not to be overlooked. Of late years disease has played terrible havoc in some of the best rivers in the country. In one of these, known to the writer, scarcely a fish is caught which does not show scars left by the disease--want of tail, partial loss of fins, and white patches where the fungus has previously grown. That numbers of the fish attacked do survive there can be no question; and that the disease may be prevented at the cost of a few fish we have but little doubt. This may be considered a bold assertion; but in these days of artificial rearing, re-stocking, and preservation, anglers and angling associations are apt either to forget or to ignore the balance of nature. Now, nature rarely overlooks an insult. Destroy her appointed instruments and beware of her revenge. That the salmon and trout may live a whole host of stream-haunting creatures are condemned, and that often upon the most insufficient evidence.