45- 



AAIERICAN FISHES. 



in its symmetrical beauty, its brilliancy, its agility, and its pluck. I 

 have had one of four pounds to leap from the water ten times, and higher 

 and further than a Sahiion. Woe to the angler who attempts, without 

 giving line, to hold one even of three pounds ; he does it at the risk of his 

 casting line, or his agile opponent tears a piece from its jaw or snout in its 

 desperate effort to escape." 



Mr. Atkins calls attention to the fact that the great run of Grilse which 

 is so prominent a feature in Canada and Europe is almost entirely absent 

 in the rivers of the United States, the fish not returning until they have 

 become adult. In rivers where Grilse are found, the Salmon always pre- 

 cede them in their ascent, for the former do not enter fresh water until 

 toward the end of summer. 



A SMOLT. 



Who can wonder at the angler's enthusiasm over " a Salmon fresh run 

 in love and glory from the sea?" Hear Christopher North's praise of a 

 perfect fish : 



" She has literally no head ; but her snout is in her shoulders. That is 

 the beauty of a fish, high and round shoulders, short waisted, no loins, but 

 all body and not long of terminating — the shorter still the better — in a 

 tail sharp and pointed as Diana's, when she is crescent in the sky." 



Mr. Kilbourne's painting in Scribner's " Game Fishes of North Ameri- 

 ca" represents a thirty-pound fish drawn to a scale of one-fourth. The 

 largest on record was one of eighty-three pounds, brought to London in 

 182 1 ; the Scotch fish rarely exceed twenty-five pounds. Periey speaks 

 of a sixty-pounder taken long ago in the Restigouche ; in 1852 many of 

 forty, and one of forty-seven pounds, were caught in the Cascapediac. 

 Mr. Frederick Curtis's score for York River, Canada, July 7, 1871, shows 

 nine fish ranging from seventeen to thirty-four and averaging twenty-six 

 and a quarter pounds. Another, for the same locality, July, 1S76, shows 



