172 SALMON. 



young; and in obtaining these the dangers incurred, and the 

 difficulties to be surmounted, are lightly regarded, so that the 

 length of the journey, which may extend to several hundreds 

 of miles, seems only an addition to the pleasures of the 

 adventure. The difficulties that are met with are produced by 

 obstacles which sometimes are natural, perhaps in the shape 

 of cascade that may be formed of a rush of water from the 

 almost perpendicular height of a dozen feet or more; and 

 strenuous are the efforts which the Salmon is seen to put 

 forth, to make good its Avay upward from the deepened pool 

 below. 



Dr. Fleming says, in his evidence before a Committee of the 

 House of Commons, that he has seen them leap up over a fall 

 of thirty feet; but the spring out of the water itself seldom 

 exceeded eight or ten feet; which must be considered enormous 

 when we consider the impulse necessary to effect it in a fish 

 of many pounds in weight; and he has also seen them leap 

 over a dry rock so as to drop into the water behind it. We 

 believe that sometimes a leap from below into the torrent as it 

 falls Avill still enable the fish to surmount the difficulty; but 

 more frequently this is without success, and the struggling 

 creature is carried back again, if not, indeed, intercepted by a 

 contrivance, referred to by Linnaeus, of placing a basket in a 

 situation to receive it, when hurried backward after an ineffectual 

 struggle. It appears however that this failure of success is not 

 always a proof of weakness; but it may be caused by the 

 oblique direction in which the fish has fallen on the descending 

 torrent, so that its side or shoulder became exposed to the force 

 of the stream, which then it was not able to resist. The tail 

 is the important organ with which these efforts are made, and 

 when we examine its intimate structure we cannot fail to be 

 impressed with the belief that this organ was especially formed 

 for the purpose to which we find it thus applied; for in the 

 generality of osseous fishes, if not in all besides this, the broader 

 plates of bone to which the rays of the tail fin are attached, 

 are placed opposite the termination of the vertebral column or 

 backbone; but in the Salmon family this is not the case. On 

 the contrary, the line of the joints of the vertebrae is lengthened 

 out so as to be extended iipward; by which means these caudal 

 plates of bone are arranged and fastened along the lower border 



