«58 



SCANDINAVIAN FISHES. 



leeches, mollusks, small fishes, and frogs. IJut as soon 

 as it has attained a weight of 1 — l'^ kilo., it rivals 

 in voracity all other predatory fishes of the same size, 

 being hardly surpassed by the Pike, and boldly attacks 

 any living tiling which it believes it can overcome, 

 not excepting its own progeny, though the peaceful 

 Bleaks and Gwyniads are perhaps its most frequent 

 victims. Even in later life, however, its diet is com- 

 posed mainly of all insects that live in the water in a 

 larval or a perfect state, and small crustaceans. Its 

 partiality to the former is so great that it seems to 

 suffer from want of food, if other insectivorous fishes 

 — even those which it readily preys upon itself — 

 multiply too extensively in the same waters." When 

 the lemmings migrate from the mountain tracts of 

 Lappmark, and endeavour, as they often do, to swim 

 the rivers in their path, they are devoured in numbers 

 by the large Trout {GraJaxar). 



Such is the life led by the true fresh-water Sal- 

 mons from the extreme nortli of Europe to the south- 

 ernmost parts of Spain, in Algiers, Asia Minor, and 

 probably, to the north of the Hindu Kush. In those 

 southern regions they are reminiscences of the time 

 when their present abodes were connected with seas 

 cold enough for the Salmon to thrive and rove about 

 in their waters. Their occurrence in Africa is no so- 

 litary phenomenon; the range of the Sticklebacks shows 

 the same memories of primeval times. Since the Me- 

 diterranean has become too warm and perhaps too salt 

 for the Salmons, they have succeeded in adapting them- 

 selves to their environments in some scattered rivers 

 and lakes, and in there maintaining their existence at 

 the Forell stage. In Scandinavia these are the fishes 

 that ascend to the greatest heights among the moun- 

 tains, as high as a fish can well advance in the moun- 

 tain lakes and lirooks. Clear and oxygenated waters, 

 freshened by rushing fixlls, are the favourite haunts of 

 tiie Kiver Trout. On the plains and to sluggish, clayey 

 rivers it is a. stranger. In Switzerland, according to 

 Fatio", it ascends to a height of 2,680 m. above the 

 sea-level. In salt water, on the other hand, the range 

 of the Salmon is terminated to tiie south by Cape 



Finisterre, in al)out 4o° X. lat., and it thus does not 

 enter the Mediterranean. On the west side of the 

 Atlantic its southward range extends to about 41° N. 

 lat., but there its northward extension is not so great. 

 It occurs, it is true, up to the middle of Labrador, 

 but is ]irobal)lv ^vanting in Greenland and on the west 

 coast of North America. It has, however, been intro- 

 duced, after several unsuccessful attempts, both about 

 18t)0 and in more recent years, into Australia' and 

 New Zealand, where Trout, originally hatched from 

 ova of the English River Trout, are said to have 

 adopted the habits ;ind dress of the migratory Sal- 

 mons'. From these regions Day'' received, among 

 other specimens, a male and a female, the former mea- 

 suring 825 mm., the latter 800 mm., whose characters 

 he found most closely to resemble those of the English 

 Sdlmo ferox. 



The Salmon spawns, like the (Jharr, in iiutumii 

 and winter. As a general rule it is, no doubt, true 

 that the Salmon is bound by its love of home to re- 

 turn from the sea to spawn in the watercourse and 

 the place where it was itself born and bred. Herein 

 it is guided liy instinct so unerring that in many lo- 

 calities the fishermen declare they can distinguish with- 

 out fail bet\veen Salmon belonging to different rivers, 

 even if the mouths of two or more of these rivers lie 

 close besides each other. Marked fish have often been 

 retaken in the river where they had been marked and 

 set at liberty. But exceptions also occur; according 

 to Day', for example, Salmon have been seen making 

 their way up the Thames, a river which had long 

 been deserted by the true Salmon. From the results of 

 the fishery in the rivers which fall into the Gulf of 

 Bothnia, it is also known that the run of the Salmon 

 in these rivers — more plentiful one year in one stream, 

 less plentiful in another — is greatly affected by diffe- 

 rent states of wind and weather, which ^vould ]:)robably 

 exert a less appreciable influence if the same Salmon 

 always repaired to the same river. 



Early in spring, soon after the breaking up of 

 the ice, the Salmon begin to appear at the mouths ot 

 the rivers which they are to ascend. The Salmon is 



" Fne Suisse, vol. V, p. 373. 



' See NicoLS, The Acclmatisat/on of tJie Salmonidcv at the Antipodes, London 1882. 

 ' Day, British tSalmoytidw, p. 145. 

 '' L. c, p. 198. 

 ' L. c, p. 66. 



