The Salmon 147 



teeth become greatly enlarged. The spawning fish change 

 greatly in color and looks, the scales sink into the spongy 

 skin, and so different are these spawning fishes from the 

 same fishes in the spring, that no ojie would suspect them 

 to belong to the same species. Technically, all the species 

 of Oncorhynchus may be known by the presence of more 

 than twelve developed rays in the anal fin, and more than 

 twelve branchiostegal rays on each side underneath the gill 

 covers. 



They all spawn in cooling water, in the fall. The 

 young descend the next spring to the sea. They feed 

 only in salt water, and after about four years (sometimes 

 three, or two) they re-enter the river, to cast their spawn and 

 die. The old salmon never feed in fresh water. The different 

 species have different habits. It is clear that the habit of 

 running is a very old one. I have received from Dr. John 

 C. Merriam, of the University of California, fragments of 

 spawning salmon jaws embedded in rock about the Post- 

 pliocene lakes of Idaho. These dead left-over salmon must 

 be easily thirty thousand years old. 



The largest and finest salmon is the Chinook, quinnat, or 

 king salmon, known in science as Oncorhynchus tscha- 

 wytscha. This salmon is the common salmon of the Sacra- 

 mento and Columbia Rivers. As a food fish it is the best 

 of all its tribe, and in size, when full grown, it ranges from 

 fifteen to one hundred pounds. 



It spawns in the fall, in snow-fed rivers, and as it ascends 

 very far, it leaves the sea early, at the time of spring 

 freshets. Up the Yukon it runs as far as Caribou Crossing, 

 2,250 miles, up the Columbia and Sacramento to their very 

 headwaters. This species is the chief stay of the canning 

 industry south of Puget Sound. Its value, commercially, 

 far exceeds that of any other fish of the Pacific, the red 

 salmon excepted. 



The blueback salmon, Alaska red salmon, or Sukkegh 

 j^ " Sock-eye "), Oncorhynchus nerka^ is even more valuable 



