442 AMERICAN FISHES. 



were known to the English, who after the conquest became their keepers. 

 In a similar way, the word Salmon, the name of the adult fish ready for 

 the banquet, was brought in by the Norman invaders. The Magna Charta 

 recognized property rights in Salmon-fisheries, and protective laws have 

 been enforced in England for at least six centuries. 



How did the Salmon get its name ? Fuller in his "Worthies," says, 

 " from its strange leaping (or flying rather) so that some will have theirs 

 termed salmoiics a sa/iendo,'^ and later etymologists have found no better 

 theory. Skeat calls attention to the fact that ihe introduction of the / is 

 due to our knowledge of the Latin form, since we do not pronounce it. 

 The Middle English name was Saumouu, very close to the Old French 

 Sauvwn. Salm is the German version and one of the tributaries of the 

 Moselle is called the River Salm. 



There are other names by the score used in Europe, but scarcely known 

 in this country, where Salmon and Grilse are the only titles in common 

 use. A Grilse is a Salmon of less than five pounds weight on its first 

 return from the sea. 



"Grilse" is believed by Houghton to be a corruption of the Swedish 

 graelax or " gray lax," /'. e. a gray salmon. 



The Salmon inhabits the North Atlantic and its tributary waters. No 

 one knows how far beyond the arctic circle it ranges, though its occurrence 

 in northern Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland, and middle Labrador is 

 well established. It occurs in all parts of northwestern Europe, and is 

 especially abundant in the British Islands, and is more or less plenty in 

 France, Belgium, Holland and Prussia, entering the Baltic, — according to 

 some authorities, the White Sea, — and ascendingthe Rhine as far as Basle. 

 The southern limit of range is in Galicia, the most northern province of 

 Spain, in latitude 43°. " There is a river in Macedon," says Fluellen, in 

 King Henry the Fifth, "and there is also a river in Monmouth ; it is 

 called Wye at Monmouth ; but it is out of my brains what is the name of 

 the other ; but 't is all one, 't is alike as my fingers is to my fingers, and 

 there is salmons in both." Fluellen was wrong, and so was Shakespeare, 

 if he shared the belief of his hero, for there are no Salmon in any portion 

 of the Mediterranean basin. 



On this side of the Atlantic the species ranges more to the southward. 

 The Connecticut River once teemed with them, and stragglers have been 

 captured in the Housatonic and the Hudson. The southern limit is 



