THE SALMON. 29 



reason, common sense, and mathematical demonstration, 

 that Salmon leap falls sixteen feet high and upwards! How- 

 •ever, up the fish must go, impelled irresistibly by the instinct 

 of procreation, which demands that they shall reach the upper 

 waters. The time of spawning often varies in the same 

 river, and is determined by the period at which impregna- 

 tion has taken place. A portion of the run, therefore, being 

 riper than the rest, spawn sooner, and, having fulfilled their 

 mission, return at once to the sea, while their less fortunate 

 belated kindred must continue their pilgrimage, perchance to 

 headwaters; for so long as their great work remains unac- 

 ■complished, they will press on until stopped by insurmount- 

 able obstacles. Gravid fish must halt in whatever part of the 

 river the crisis overtakes them. Such as are obliged to con- 

 tinue on to the upper spawning-beds arrive in sorry plight, 

 mutilated, crushed, and almost shapeless. Fortunate are 

 those which have vitality enough left to be able to return to 

 the sea. Indeed, so great is the mortality, that it has been 

 generally believed that they never return at all. 



Speckled Trout are found in almost all eastern Salmon 

 streams, and the angler who chances to try his luck in them 

 will often pick out of the riffs fish of varying size which he 

 looks at twice, being in doubt of their identity. Some of 

 them are half-pound fish, with a row of six intense carmine 

 spots on each side, and others are but finger-long, flanked with 

 five dusky vertical bars. He thinks they are a new kind of 

 trout, but they are really adolescent and baby Salmon, called 

 Smolts and Parr. When the Smolt goes to sea, as he does 

 his second year, he will gain a pound a month in the salt 

 water, and after a luxurious absence will return to his birth- 

 place in the blue and silver livery of a Grilse, and very much 

 like an adult in appearance. As a Grilse he tarries in the 

 upper pools till spring, and again returns to the sea a full- 

 grown Salmon, grows fat and ponderous, and again ascends 

 as a breeding fish of thirty to fifty pounds in weight. There 



