SALMON. 43 
stream. It was a strange and novel sight to 
see three moving lines of fish—the dead and 
dying in the eddies and slack-water along the 
banks, the living, breasting the current in the 
centre, blindly pressing on to perish like their 
kindred. 
Even in streams where a successful deposition 
of the ova has been accomplished, there never 
appears, as far as my observations have gone, any 
disposition in the parent-fish to return to the sea. 
Their instinct still prompts them to keep swim- 
ming up-stream, until you often find them with 
their noses worn quite off, their heads bruised 
and battered, fins and tail ragged and _ torn, 
bodies emaciated, thin, and flabby; the bright 
silvery tints dull and leaden in hue, a livid red 
streak extending along each side from head to 
tail, in which large ulcerous sores have eaten 
into the very vitals. 
The Indians say all the salmon that come up 
to spawn die; but if all do not die, I have no 
hesitation in saying that very few spring-salmon 
ever reach the saltwater after ascending the 
rivers to spawn. Why there should be this 
marvellous waste of salmon in the rivers of the 
North-west I am somewhat puzzled to imagine. 
The distance the fish have to travel from the sea 
