2 14 The Ottawa Naturalist. [February 



that the ill-effects reappear in the following' season, the eggs and 

 brood of the fish, permitted after confinement to ascend to the 

 spawning grounds, being very inferior and clearly affected detri- 

 mentally. The eminent Scottish authority. Professor W. C. Mc- 

 intosh, some years ago described flounders that became egg-bound 

 and swollen while confined in salt-water tanks ; and ultimately 

 they sickened and died. 



The results, in all cases, are not so unfavourable. Sir J. G. 

 Maitland kept some sea-salmon fry from March, 1881, when they 

 were hatched, until 1884, and took the eggs and mill, so that he 

 secured young salmon fry of small parent fish (smolts) which had 

 never been to sea. Dr. Francis Day has told us that some of the 

 young brood had attained a length of c^}4 inches in 1886. The 

 retention of sea-salmon in fresh water is found usually to retard 

 their growth, and in one of the earliest experiments (at Lier, in 

 Norway) the weight reached in five years was under two pounds, 

 less than one-tenth of that normally reached by migratory salmon. 

 Sea-sahnon planted in Lake Huron prior to 1883 were reported by 

 the late Mr. Wilmot to be smaller than those found along the 

 coast. The ouananiche of Lake St. John, P.Q., like their land- 

 locked congeners in Lake Onawa and other waters in Maine, and 

 the Chamcook Lakes in New Brunswick, are smaller than sea- 

 salmon. In many cases access to the sea is possible ; but 

 if from some geological or other natural cause the fish 

 were originally prevented from descending to the sea, the 

 catadromous habit appears not to have been resumed, partly 

 no doubt owing to the abundance of food in their fresh-water 

 habitat. Land-locked smelt are very often abundant in waters 

 containing land-locked salmon, and they aflford an ample 

 supply of food. Pacific salmon exhibit the same phenomenon, 

 of which Kennerley's salmon is an example ; but the spring 

 salmon artificially land-locked in California in 1875 or earlier, 

 bred, and their progeny reached a weight of eight or ten pounds, 

 though on account of scarcity of food, another series were found 

 in nine years to barely reach a weight of two pounds. The spring 

 salmon or quinnat is a large species ranging from 15 to 50 or 60 

 pounds or even more. The salmon retained at Tadousac, and in 

 certain small lakes adjacent to the Restigouche proved to be 



I 



