CHAPTER IX 



Trout and Salmon 



TO write a book about either salmon or trout would be 

 easy. To write a chapter on both is difficult. More is known 

 of the natural history of the two types than of any other 

 fish in the world. More has been written about them than 

 any other fish, but, aside from the literature designed for 

 scientific consumption, it has been mostly about fishing rather 

 than fish. To keep ourselves within the limits of what even 

 the most liberal-minded would call a chapter, it will be 

 necessary for us to confine ourselves here to the high points 

 of the latter subject only. 



Trout and salmon are much alike. They are members of 

 the family Salmonidae. Natives of the northern hemisphere 

 only, they are spread through Europe, Asia, and North 

 America. They have taken up their abode in Corsica and 

 Sardinia and Switzerland, in the rushing torrents of the 

 Pyrenees and the quiet brooks of Normandy, in the clear 

 English chalk streams and the rough Welsh currents, in the 

 smiling Loire and the majestic Rhine. They have entered 

 the rivers of Scotland and Wales. They have made Resti- 

 gouche and Beaverkill and Nepigon and Gunnison and 

 Klamath great names in the American fisherman's geog- 

 raphy. But they have never crossed the equator. If the New 

 Zealander and the South African are able to share in their 

 English cousins' piscatorial pastimes, it is only because the 

 trout and the salmon have been transported by ship across 

 warm equatorial waters which they have never penetrated 

 under their own power. 



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