46 SALMON OF NOVA SCOTIA—GILPIN. 
I have now shown you our Salmon from his almost first ap- 
pearance as a minnow, explained how in our rivers his changes 
into a Parr and Smolt are obscured by the ice; exhibited him 
going to sea for the first time as a Smolt, and also by a rare 
chance shown him to you in his form of half parr, and half smolt, 
and that produced by his own efforts. 1 have pointed him out 
as a grilse, shown him again in his grand proportions, and glori- 
ous flashings of silver light, as he is exposed in our markets, and 
have lastly given you some drawing of his degeneration in colour, 
of his leanness, and the singular and almost grotesque changes 
in the jaws of the male during spawning. In this I have given 
you nothing new, but only, as it were, given you old things, 
stated from original and new material, yet it is well to fix all 
these with a sketch and a date. In fixing the dates of his pro- 
longed journey up river from the sea, and his rapid exodus 
downwards, I cannot deny that they still require confirmation. 
That they may be found to vary not only in the different rivers 
of the Province, but at different seasons in each river, why some 
ascend early, remain long in fresh water, and perform the func- 
tion of spawning thoreughly degenerated, and others perform the 
same functions with all the strength and health of ocean run 
fish—(we find, Report Fisheries, 1877, that at one hatching sta- 
tion, the fish taken for spawning purposes were kept till wanted 
in tide way basins)—remains te be explained. If we compare our 
short streams with the St. Lawrence, or even the St. John, of 
New Brunswick, our ghallow lakes, lying so close to sea-board, 
with Ontario, or even our ice-bourfa streams with the never frozen 
waters of England, or the arctic winters of Greenland and Labra- 
dor, and remember that the same species frequent all, we can 
only wonder that these vast physical differences have produced 
so little changes. In regard to the only new fact I have put be- 
fore you, the retention of al] the Salmon in our waters during 
the winter, in the inland lakes, I think Iam justified in asserting 
it, or at least of drawing the attention of observers to it; but such 
observation sheuld only be made where the physical features 
correspond with our own. If I have succeeded in giving you the 
itinerary of a Nova Scotian Salmon, with his biography attached, 
only approximately even, the object of this paper is effected. 
