Excerpt from The Salmon There are at least two respects in which the subject of Salmon is important, and two in which it is interesting. It is important commercially, the salmon fisheries forming ancient and valuable property, a large means of employ ment, and a very considerable supply of food somewhat less important as furnishing an old and keenly - relished sport, the privilege of exercising which has become a sort of property superadded to the value for purely commercial uses. It is interesting as involving some of the strangest facts, the most instructive experiments, and the most perplexing mysteries in natural history; and as having within these few years undergone inves tigation more searching and legislation more vigorous than for centuries before. The subject, too, is especially a British, or British and-lrish one - still more especially a Scottish one. The great majority of countries have by nature been cut off from direct interest and from any kind of power in the matter, and no country has an interest at once so great and so imperilled as our own; for upon few nations has the gift of the king of fish been conferred. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.