upon having their present barren rivers stocked with as valuable articles of consumption and of commerce as their fowl-houses or their farm-yards.

I shall, for brevity's sake, abstain from enlarging on this subject, merely observing that ample information can be obtained upon it by consulting the works of M.M. Coste and Fry, which are to be found in the libraries and bookshops in this city; and that in the streams in which it may be put into operation-if there are mill-dams upon them-the artificial construction to enable the fish to descend and ascend to and from the sea will still be requisite.

Having said so much on the decrease and restoration of salmon in Canada, let us now turn our attention for a few moments to their preservation in the rivers in which they still abound. These rivers I believe to be as valuable and inexhaustible as any others upon the face of the globe, but so circumstanced that their capabilities have not been developed, and that one year of neglect will cause their serious injury, if not their utter destruction, as salmon streams. They extend along the northern shore of the St. Lawrence from Quebec to Labrador, a distance of about 500 miles, and are many in number. They are chiefly held under lease from the Government of Canada, by the Hudson's Bay Company, who fish some of them in an unsystematic manner, with standing nets, because they can be conveniently and cheaply so fished, whilst others are left wholly to the destructive spear of the Indian. In the smaller streams on which the fishermen of the company are employed, a series of standing barrier-nets, (which kill indiscriminately every fish of every size and weight,) is used, a process, which in European rivers, would have long since banished salmon from them. But in Canada the high water in the spring enables some of the largest and strongest of the breeding fish to ascend the streams before those nets can be set, and when they get beyond them, they are comparatively safe in the mountain rivers and lakes which never hear a human footfall till winter-which congeals their surfaces into ice-tempts the poor Indian to tread their banks in pursuit of the bear, the marten, the mink and the otter.

In well regulated salmon fisheries in Europe, the fish-by the construction of proper weirs and reservoirs-are almost as much under the control of the managers as the sheep on their farms or the fowl in their poultry-yards. They can send such of them as they please to market, permit the fittest for the purpose to pass on to propagate their kind, allow the young to enjoy life till they become mature, and suffer the sick and unhealthy to return to their invigorating pastures

in the depths of the ocean. But no portion of this system is prac

tised in cur American rivers. There is not a salmon weir in the province; and the consequence is, that young and old, kelt and grilse, worthless and unwholesome, the fish are killed by the undiscriminating net and the cruel spear.

It appears to me that the Hudson's Bay Company set little value on these fisheries, and maintain them merely as an accident appertaining to the fur trade which is far more profitable. The approaching termination of their lease and the consequent uncertainty of their tenure may perhaps appear a sufficient reason for their not incurring the expense of erecting weirs, by which much more profit could be made of their fisheries. Unproductive and wasteful as their mode of fishing is, the protection the Hudson's Bay Company affords is the only present safeguard for the existence of Salmon in Canada. I am persuaded that were that protection withdrawn for ONE SUMMER, without the substitution of some other as effective, this noble fish would be utterly exterminated from our country. Fishermen from Gaspé, Rimouski, New Brunswick, Labrador, Newfoundland, the Magdalene Islands and the United States-whose numbers and skill would enable them to do thoroughly what the servants of the H. B. C. from their paucity and inexperience do ineffectually— would swarm up our rivers, and with nets, spears, torches, and every other engine of piscine destruction, would kill, burn and mutilate every fish that ventured into the rivers. Already has this been attempted. For the last two or three years schooners from the United States, have regularly arrived, in the salmon season, at the Bay of Seven Islands, their crews well armed, and have set their nets in the river Moisie, in despite of the officers of the H. B. C. Similar circumstances have occurred at other fishing stations in the tributaries of the St. Lawrence; no means, that I am aware of, having been resorted to for punishing the aggressors or preventing a repetition of their outrages. The river Bersinies has this year (1856) been altogether in the hands of a speculating and rapacious American, who employed the spear of the Indian to furnish him with mutilated salmon, several boxes of which he brought to this city, in the month of September, when they were out of season, unfit for food and flavorless, having previously glutted the markets of Portland, Boston and New York with more palatable fish.

There can be but little doubt that many of the salmon streams in Lower Canada would be as productive, under proper management, as rivers in Europe for which large annual rents are paid; but it must

be admitted that the great distance at which they are situated from Civilization, the want of the means of intercourse between them and the inhabited parts of the country, the liability to trespass by armed ruffians, and the dreadful rigor of the climate in winter, present very serious obstacles to those who might wish to undertake such management for obviating some of which I see no better method than the employment, during the summer months, of one or two armed steamers of light draught of water, such as are used for a similar purpose on the east coast of Denmark. These steamers should each have a commander on board, who should be a magistrate and empowered by parliament to act summarily in cases of infraction of the Fishery Laws, and beside supplying the lighthouses and other public works with stores, oil, building materials, etc., conveying the workmen managers and fishermen to their several stations, and protecting the lessees of the Province, might also be profitably employed as the means of transporting the fresh caught salmon from the several rivers, packed in ice, to the Rail-road Stations at St. Thomas and Quebec; from whence they could be distributed to the markets of Canada and the United States. Two Bills for the protection of salmon and trout in Lower Canada have recently become Acts of Parliament. These may possibly be productive of some good in civilized and inhabited districts, but must be utterly ineffective in those parts of the Province where there are no settled inhabitants, no magistrates, and no tribunals before which those who infringe the Law can be cited; and this is the case of all the best rivers in Lower Canada.

I cannot close these observations without endeavoring to impress on all who hear me, the necessity for prompt action in this matter; for there can be no doubt upon the mind of any man who is acquaintted with the localities, that if the King's Posts should be abandoned by the Hudson's Bay Company, before some well devised system be adopted for carrying on the work which they have hitherto effected, two melancholy results will be the inevitable consequences, viz.the salmon rivers will be taken possession of by hordes of lawless men, who will in no way contribute to the revenue of the country, but will quickly and recklessly exterminate the fish, and then desert our shores, leaving behind them no trace of their temporary occupation except the destruction they have wrought-and more terrible still-a whole tribe of Indians (the Montagnards) will be reduced to a state of positive starvation, for upon the Hudson's Bay Company they have hitherto been, and are now dependent for their ammunition, guns, and other means by which they obtain their food and clothing.

ON PRESERVING TIMBER FROM DECAY.

BY JOSEPH ROBINSON, TORONTO.

Read before the Canadian Institute, December 20th, 1856.

The economic value of timber, and the immense outlay required for the constant restoration of works executed in the cheaper but least durable varieties of woods, have long directed the attention of practical men to the desirableness of discovering some process by which greater durability could be given to a material, in all other respects so admirably adapted to the objects in view, without affecting its original cost to such an extent as to render it no longer available for the numerous ordinary purposes to which it is now applied. To this subject, attention was anew directed in the last number of the Canadian Journal, in an article on the " Preservation of Timber;" and it may not be out of place, by way of adding to the existing fund of information upon a subject of such general interest, to bring before the Institute, a well attested and valuable process invented and used by the eminent French chemist, Dr. Boucherie.

This process is the result of twenty years experimental labor and study, and is regarded in France and England as of the highest importance, being the only mode yet brought into practical and extensive application, by which the durability of woods, liable to decay, can be economically and effectually secured.

It accomplishes two objects: first, that of expelling the sap; and, secondly, filling the pores of the timber with a preservative solution. The mode of impregnating trees hitherto adopted, has been by saturation only, assisted sometimes by great pressure, and by previously subjecting the timber in cylinders to a vacuum or to heat.

Dr. Boucherie's process differs entirely: inasmuch as he applies a moderate pressure, and to one end only of the sap tubes of the tree, the effect of which is to expel the sap by the preserving liquor which takes its place. By some of the processes hitherto used, the sap (the fermentation of which is admitted to be the cause of decay) is allowed to remain in the tree; in the process now under review, the sap is expelled, and the tubes are thoroughly cleansed from the fermenting matter, which is displaced by an injected solution of a preservative nature.

The tubular structure of trees has been long known, but it has not * Vide Vol. I., p. 559. New Series.

been known that no connexion exists between the tubes laterally; and this is shewn by the interesting experiment of stopping up or shutting off certain of the sap-tubes at the end of the tree, leaving exposed such as form a word: which word, or name, by the injection of a coloring liquor, can be driven from one end of the tree to the other; so that wherever the tree is cut through, the name appears distinctly in colored letters on the exposed sections.

This experiment is interesting, not only in a scientific point of view; but it shews that none of the processes hitherto used, wherein lateral pressure is involved, can force any preserving liquor into a tree without a degree of violence, which must injure the fibre of the wood, and destroy its strength and use for many purposes.

The advantages which would result from expelling the sap and replacing it by an antisceptic fluid, have been long known; and the idea of effecting this by applying the fluid under pressure at the end of a piece of timber is not new, having been suggested and patented many years ago by Mr. Bethel. But the means then used did not accomplish the object in such a manner as to admit of its commercial application. Hence the more expensive process of creosoting has been adopted; where the timber is totally immersed in the oil, under pressure, a method which does not permit the sap to escape.

By the old process of violent pressure, the preserving liquor is forced at right angles to the tubes through the woody fibre of the tree, injuring its strength as well as its capability, in railway sleepers, for example, to resist the wear of the chairs; consuming at the same time an unnecessary amount of the preserving liquor, without (whatever pressure may be applied) thoroughly impregnating the timber, while one-sixth or one-eighth of the force only is necessary by the new process, and the portion alone requiring the preservative infusion, viz. the soft matter between the rings, is impregnated, the woody fibre remaining unbroken and undisturbed.

Another important advantage in Dr. Boucherie's process, is derived from the simplicity and moderate cost of the apparatus, which, for operations on a small scale, will not exceed £10 or £15, and for a railway of two hundred miles, under £50.

The practical application and entire success of this invention in Europe will be seen by the printed official reports. The first of these was made, by order of the French Government, in the year 1850, the second in 1852, and the third in 1856: being an abstract from the official jury report of the Exposition Universelle of 1855, whereby it will be seen that the distinguished honor of one of the large gold