1896. | NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 185 
the value of the pack was over $59,000,000. The salmon salted, 
consumed fresh locally, or shipped fresh to other parts of the 
country,aggregated 192,000,000 pounds, making the total output 
of the Columbia 850,000,000 pounds, worth $66,000,000. If the 
total salmon catch of the Columbia river during that period 
could be loaded into railroad cars, 42,500 ordinary freight cars 
would be required to contain the fish, which would make a solid 
train over 280 miles long.” 
During the five years beginning with 1889, the number of 
pounds of salmon utilized in Alaska was 275,262,240, an average 
of over 55,000,000 pounds a year. 
The British Columbia salmon pack in 1895 was 566,395 cases 
of 48 pounds each. At the rate of 12 fish to a case this repre- 
sents 6,796,740 salmon. 
It is safe to assume that fully 20,000,000 of salmon are util- 
ized annually by canning and salting establishments of the 
Pacific coast, and these represent chiefly only two of the five 
species. Vast numbers of salmon are consumed also by whites 
and natives in the region inhabited by the fish. Upward of 
150,000 salmon have been caught in a day at a single fishing 
station in Alaska. 
The species represented by the greatest number of individuals 
are the red salmon and the little humpback. 
The sea-going habit of the salmon makes the study of its 
marine life history impracticable, and there are no stations on 
any of our salmon streams at which continuous observations 
are made. There is not even a fishery at sea for any of the 
species, as there is in the Baltic in winter for the Atlantic sal- 
mon. Under such conditions our knowledge of the fish comes 
slowly and imperfectly, the sources of information being limited 
chiefly to fish-breeding establishments wherein salmon are kept 
under a species of domestication. 
The following remarks upon the migrations of the Atlantic 
salmon are found in Day’s British and Irish Salmonide : 
“Respecting the salmon, trout and charr, the most diverse 
opinions have been and are still held as to whether their ances- 
try was marine or fresh water.* 
‘The fact must not be lost sight of that, if salmon ever de- 
pended for their entire subsistence on the fresh water they ascend, 
the amount of food they would require would be so great in a 
river as to constitute a nuisance and cause pollution were it 
left unconsumed. 
*Parnell, 1838, remarked there is no doubt that the true abode of the salmon is in the 
sea, for as soon as it has entered the rivers it begins to deteriorate in condition, the 
scales lose their brilliant silvery lustre, and the flesh becomes soft and pale. 
