i88oU Salmon Instincts 



at the age of four years in the larger species, at two in the smaller Spawning 

 Humpback; and every individual, male or female, dies after habits 

 spawning. The two noble salmon, the Chinook and the Red, 

 ascend streams to their fountain heads. Salmon are known to 

 run up the Yukon as far as the streams at the head of Lake 

 Labarge that is, some 1800 miles. Both King Salmon and 

 Red Salmon go up the Columbia to the Bitter Root Mountains 

 of Idaho, a distance of over a thousand miles. Red Salmon, 

 as already noted, spawn only above a lake; as a matter of 

 fact, also, the species has never even once been seen in a stream 

 without a lake. Yet it makes no difference whether the in- 

 evitable water lies only five or six 'miles from the sea, as in the 

 case of Lake Boca de Quadra, or whether, as in the case of 

 Labarge, it is enormously distant. 



One of the most difficult problems in animal psychology, 

 as yet unsolved, concerns this extraordinary instinct. How, 

 when eggs and milt are ripening, does a Red Salmon dis- 

 tinguish between streams that have lakes and those that have 

 not? Has he perhaps a lingering remembrance dating from the 

 time he drifted, a fingerling, tail foremost down to the sea, of 

 the location of the lake in which he grew up? Perhaps. 

 And why is the Red Salmon alone so attracted to lakes, while 

 all other forms are totally indifferent to them? Again, how 

 does he know when to start? The Columbia is a whole sum- 

 mer's job; the Chilcoot, the Chilcat, the Karluk, or the Boca 

 de Quadra can be ascended in a day. 



At Astoria the three firms of Booth, Kinney, and 

 Badollet had just begun to can salmon, which they 

 shipped all over the world; to this industry Gilbert 

 and I have since had a continuous relation. Our 

 report in the Census of 1880 was the first serious 

 study of salmon fishery and its methods. I myself 

 was connected with almost all investigations con- 

 cerning it for the next thirty years. Gilbert's re- 

 sponsibility still endures, a series of intensive studies 

 being now (1920) carried on in Alaska under his 

 direction. One important result of recent research 



n 227 3 



