STRAY NOTES ON THE GAME-FISH 61 



is, at least, one fixed point in their career. It is practi- 

 cally the only one — the only bed-rock on which reason- 

 ing may find a solid base. Why then, knowing - that they 

 will not spawn till near Christmas, should salmon enter 

 the rivers in February — or even in April? The idea of 

 obtaining - food must be dismissed at once. That all 

 tends the other way, since there exists no food in fresh 

 waters for them. In those far back ages, in his fire- 

 salar period, the salmon recognised that rivers afforded 

 no feeding-grounds for him. It is to that prescience he 

 owes his evolution. 



All salmon return from sea in the highest possible con- 

 dition — in a word, gorged with high living. So distended 

 with curd and fatty matter are the early-spring fish that 

 not one more ounce could they contain. This "curd" 

 overlying the whole body, interposed between each flake 

 of flesh, and clothing the pylorics, is Nature's provision — 

 her substitute for food, during the salmon's sojourn in 

 fresh water. The salmon then needs no food ; but, far 

 more than that, he is, I am satisfied, incapable of receiv- 

 ing or assimilating food. His stomach and digestive 

 organs are already, ere yet he has quitted salt water, 

 thrown temporarily out of gear — shrivelled up. 



I believe I was one of the first to notice this fact ; 

 though Sir Herbert Maxwell had arrived at similar con- 

 clusions about the same time or possibly before. It was in 

 the summer of 1892, when fishing in Surendal, Norway, 

 that my attention was drawn thereto. Each night our host, 

 Mr Fleetwood Sandeman, held autopsies on the salmon 

 caught during the day : the object being to discover what 

 food their stomachs contained. A practical anatomist, it is 

 clear, was needed ; and I do not think any of us claimed 

 the smallest technical knowledge of that science. Yet even 



