fisheries for this species down to recent times. The occupation of the
country by Europeans introduced a new set of antagonistic forces which
began even in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to operate
against the natural increase and maintenance of the salmon and other
migratory fishes.

In many localities the closing of smaller streams by dams, and the
pursuit of the fish with nets and other implements, had already begun
to tell on their number; but it was not until the present century that
the industrial activities of the country began to seize upon the water
power of the larger rivers and to interrupt in them by lofty dams the
ascent of salmon to their principal spawning grounds. These forces were
rapid in their operations, aided as they were by a greatly augmented
demand for food from a rapidly increasing population.

In 1865 the salmon fisheries were extinct in all but five or six of the
thirty rivers known to have been originally inhabited by them. In many
of these rivers the last salmon had been taken, and in others the
occurrence of individual specimens was extremely rare. Among the
exhausted rivers may be mentioned the Connecticut, 380 miles long; the
Merrimack,180 miles long; the Saco,120 miles long; the Androscoggin,
220 miles long; and some twenty smaller rivers. There still survived
salmon fisheries in the following rivers, namely, the Penobscot, the
Kennebec, the Denny's, the East Machias, the Saint Croix, and the
Aroostook, a tributary of the Saint John. The most productive of these
was the Penobscot, yielding 5,000 to 10,000 salmon yearly. The Kennebec
occasionally yielded 1,200 in a year, but generally much less. The
other rivers were still less productive.

The movement for the re-establishment of these fisheries originated in