SKIMMING THE SURFACE 



not been very far from the river where it was born, but 

 there are striking exceptions to this. In fact the Hfe of the 

 salmon during the time it spends in the sea — at least one 

 year and very often considerably longer — is still a 

 mystery. We continue almost completely ignorant of 

 what salmon do, and where they go in the sea. Yet salmon 

 have been studied far more than most fish. 



They normally swim at an average rate of eleven miles 

 per hour. But experiments have been carried out which 

 show that salmon can swim far faster than this, in fact 

 that they hold the speed record for inland fish. Emer- 

 son Stringham, in the American Naturalist, showed that 

 computations made on the basis of the height that a 

 salmon leaps above water were proof that the fish can 

 attain a velocity of over twenty- two miles an hour ; while 

 an English writer, Ernest Prothero, says: "No current is 

 rapid enough to daunt it; it can dart along at thirty 

 miles an hour, easily surmounting obstacles such as falls, 

 by leaps of ten to fifteen feet." The truth probably lies 

 between these estimates. Frank W. Lane, who has given 

 exhaustive study to the speeds attained by living creatures 

 of all kinds, gives the salmon a maximum speed of 

 twenty-five miles an hour, timed with a stop-watch. 



Wonderful migrations are made by Pacific salmon. 

 The Chinook, or ''king salmon", which is the largest of 

 these (it has been known to weigh as much as a hundred 

 pounds) may travel i,ooo miles up the Columbia river 

 to its parent stream, or even farther up the Yukon river 

 of Alaska. It recognizes its original home by some 

 instinct unknown to us. 



On their upward journeys into rivers salmon eat 

 nothing, so that their stomachs shrink to negligible pro- 

 portions. They enter the rivers in magnificent condition 

 and fight their way up-stream with extraordinary per- 

 sistence and force. Each male chooses his mate for the 

 perilous journey, and he and his "wife" keep together 

 all the way. The jaws of the male fishes develop fanged 



35 



