Let us suppose, for example, that the fish grows at the rate of five pounds per annum: it would, therefore, take ten years to achieve a growth of fifty pounds. Now it is needless to say that, in British waters at any rate, we never either see or hear of a fish of that weight. The fact is, we do not give our salmon time to grow to that size. The greater portion of the fish that we kill are two years old, or at the most three—fish running from eight pounds to sixteen pounds in weight. It is clear that, if we go on for a year or two longer at the rate of slaughter we have been indulging of late years, there will speedily not be even a three-year-old fish to pull out of the water. It is very suggestive of the state of the salmon-fisheries that we have now eaten down to our three-year-olds. Another fertile source of destruction is the killing of grilse; the grilse being a virgin fish, its slaughter is just analogous to the killing of lambs without due regulation as to quantity. In this respect, “the conduct of salmon proprietors is as rational as high-farming with the help of tile-drains, liquid-manure, and steam-power, would be for the purpose of eating corn in the blade.” As many as 100,000 grilses have been taken from one river in a year—a notable example of killing the goose for the golden egg. If we had an Act of Parliament to prevent the capture of grilse, we should never want salmon. The parr and smolt are protected. Why? Because they are the young of the salmon. Well, so is grilse the young of the salmon, and grilse also are sadly in want of protection. [Illustration: STAKE-NETS ON THE RIVER SOLWAY.] Recent debates in the House of Commons on the English and Scottish Salmon Fisheries Bills brought out very distinctly the worst phase of the salmon question—viz. the prevalence of stake and bag nets. These machines have exercised a baneful influence on the fisheries, and have in numerous instances intercepted about one-half of the salmon of particular rivers, before they could reach their own waters. These nets are erected in the tideways, not far from the shore, and as the fish are coasting along towards their own particular spawning-ground, they are intercepted either in the chambers of the bag-net, or in the meshes of the stake-net. It is said, too, that fish taken in the tidal estuaries are in far finer condition than those caught in the fresh-water division of the large salmon rivers; hence they are in greater demand, and bring a slightly better price. There is no consideration among tacksmen of river fishings, or proprietors of bag or stake nets, for the preservation of the fish; it seems to be a rule with these gentlemen to kill all they can. It is obvious that, if the upper proprietors of the waters were to act in the same spirit, and kill all the salmon that reached the breeding-grounds, that fine fish, not unaptly called the “venison of the waters,” would very speedily become extinct.