PISCES-SALMON. 729 



ORDER VI. — M AL AC OPTER YGII ABDOMI- 

 NAL E S. 



These fishes have the skeleton osseous ; jaws complete ; bronchia? pecti- 

 nated ; all the rays of the fins soft, except sometimes the first ray of the 

 dorsal, or pectoral fins ; ventral fins behind the abdomen. 



THE SALMON 1 



Is distinguished from oiner fish by having two dorsal fins, of which the 

 hindermost is fleshy and without rays ; they have teeth both in the jaws and 

 the tongue, and the body is covered with round and minutely striated scales. 

 Gray is the color of the back and sides, sometimes spotted with black, and 

 sometimes plain. The belly is silvery. It is entirely a northern fish, being 

 found both at Greenland, Kamtschatka, and the northern parts of North 

 America, but never so far south as the Mediterranean. Salmon are now 

 scarce in all our rivers south of the Merrimac. In the Connecticut they 

 were once so abundant as to be less esteemed than shad, and the fishermen 

 used to require their purchasers to take some salmon with their shad. "Within 

 the memory of persons living, they were taken in plenty even as far up as 

 Vermont. The Indians used to catch a great many of them, as they were 

 ascending Bellows Falls. It is supposed that the locks, dams, and canals 

 constructed in the river, have driven this valuable fish away. About the 

 latter end of the year, the salmon begin to press up the rivers, even for hun- 

 dreds of miles, to deposit their spawn, which lies buried in the sand till 

 spring, if not disturbed by the floods, or devoured by other fishes. In this 

 peregrination it is not to be stopped, even by cataracts. About March, the 

 young ones begin to appear, and about the beginning of May, the river is 

 full of the salmon fry, which are then four or five inches long, and gradually 

 proceed to the sea. About the middle of June, the earliest fry begin tb 

 return again from the sea, and are then from twelve to fourteen inches long. 

 The growth of this fish is so extraordinary, that a young salmon being taken 

 at Warrington, and which weighed seven pounds on the seventh of Februa- 



2 Salmo solar, Lin. The genus Salmo has the greater part of the upper jaw formed by 

 the maxillary hones ; mouth large and furnished with teeth ; ventral fins opposite the 

 middle of the first dorsal, and the adipose fin opposite the anal ; bronchial membrane 

 i'ith more than eight rays. 



92 



