186 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



holm, whether great salmon or small salmon, must have been hatched 

 in the places closely bordering thereon, and migrated there from the 

 numerous streams and rivers of Sweden and Finland emptying into the 

 Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland ; certainly also from the Russian, Polish, 

 and German rivers — for example, the Oder — which flow into the eastern 

 portion of t"he Baltic; for there is absolutely no reason for accepting the 

 assertion of many Bornholm fishermen that the salmon breeds also in 

 the sea in that vicinity, which assertion is supported by the statement 

 that the water is fresh enough for the capture of small salmon, reaching, 

 in a solitary case, three-quarters of a pound in weight, and they say that 

 they have frequently seen salmon eggs on the algse and the small stones 

 associated with them on the sea bottom. Other things are necessary 

 besides fresh water to furnish a suitable spawning-place for salmon; 

 and the supposed salmon eggs which have been shown to me for some 

 years on Fucus were certainly something very different. The presence 

 of small salmon, which is traced far to the westward in the Baltic, even 

 into the southern portion of the Great Belt, shows simply that the 

 young salmon can leave the place of their birth earlier to develop into 

 the adult condition in the sea. For a detailed description of the Born- 

 holm salmon-fishery attention may be called to a treatise written by V. 

 Skrydstrup, school inspector, which is printed in the Norwegian Fish- 

 ery Journal, volume 2, page 15 et seq. Since the capture of salmon in 

 Denmark, as a matter of course, is necessarily much smaller than in 

 Sweden and Finland, and as the greatest portion of our catch is exported 

 whole, it is not to be wondered at that we fail to find such hooks in the 

 salmon taken as occur so frequently in the neighboring countries men- 

 tioned, and which Professor Malmgren has had the opportunity of 

 bringing to light ; and still it appears probable that they must occur 

 off Bornholm, which lies within the usual range of the salmon and so 

 near to the North German coast of the Baltic. However, it may be due 

 as much or perhaps more to the want, in discoverers, of a knowledge 

 of the scientific importance of such a find that nothing of the kind has 

 been reported. At least nothing has come to my knowledge during 

 the many years of my relation to the fisheries, and I have inquired 

 vainly hitherto at Bornholm whether any such thing has occurred; but 

 it is not impossible that this may have happened and gone unnoticed. 

 Under these circumstances it is fortunate that an accident enabled me 

 to secure possession of a somewhat compressed brass hook which was 

 found in a salmon weighing about eighteen pounds, caught late iu April 

 of this year iu the Great Belt south of Korsor. This hook is, so far as 

 indicated by its size and form, found, upon comparison, so entirely like 

 the one described and figured by Malmgren as Fig. 2* that there can be 

 no doubt that the salmon must have swallowed it and carried it from the 

 North German coast of the Baltic. It differs from Fig. 2 only in having 



* Bull. U. 8. P. C, 1884, p. 323. 



