THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



MAY, 1881. 



STOEY OF A SALMON". 



By Peofessor DAVID S. JOEDAN. 



IN the realm of the Northwest Wind, on the boundary-line between 

 the dark fir-forests and the sunny plains, there stands a mountain, 

 a great white cone two miles and a half in perpendicular height. On 

 its lower mile, the dense fir- woods cover it with never-changing green ; 

 on its next half-mile, a lighter green of grass and bushes gives place in 

 winter to white ; and, on its uppermost mile, the snows of the great Ice 

 age still linger in unspotted purity. The people of Washington Ter- 

 ritory say that this mountain is the great " King-pin of the Universe," 

 which shows that, even in its own country. Mount Rainier is not with- 

 out honor. 



Flowing down from the southwest slope of Mount Rainier is a 

 cold, clear river fed by the melting snows of the mountain. Madly it 

 hastens down over white cascades and beds of shining sands, through 

 birch-woods and belts of dark firs to mingle its waters at last with 

 those of the great Columbia. 



This river is the Cowlitz, and on its bottom, not many years ago, 

 there lay half-buried in the sand a number of little orange-colored 

 globules, each about as large as a pea. These were not much in them- 

 selves, but, like the philosopher's monads, each one had in it the prom- 

 ise and potency of an active life. In the water above them, little 

 suckers and chubs and prickly sculpins were straining their mouths to 

 draw these globules from the sand, and vicious-looking crawfishes 

 picked them up with their blundering hands and examined them with 

 their telescopic eyes. But one, at least, of the globules escaped their 

 scientific curiosity, else this story would not be worth telling. 



The sun shone down on it through the clear water, and the ripples 

 of the Cowlitz said over it their incantations, and in it at last awoke a 



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