46 KENDALL: NEW ENGLAND SALMONS. 



tion would probably in all places be somewhat similar were it unchecked. Mackenzie 

 remarked of the Scottish rivers that the "... salmon proceed with the flood tide and 

 rest during the ebb in eddies and in easy water, hence great numbers are always caught 

 in the flood traps of the stake nets placed in their course, while a comparatively few are 

 got in the ebb traps. If the ebb sets in, and the water becomes shallow from the receding 

 of the tide, they drop down with the tide into deeper water, until the return of the flood 

 tide enables them to continue their course, and in this dropping down some fall within 

 the range and are caught in the ebb traps of the engines in question; but it is in the 

 summer season, in dry weather, that by far the greater number are so caught." At this 

 period the water in the rivers is so low that they swim about with the tide, awaiting 

 the flood.' 



Day seems to accept the statement as a fact, that the salmon ascend with the flood 

 tide, but he says that it does not disprove that a great many descend with the ebb tide; 

 and cites an instance of several sets of 'puts and putchers' on the right bank of the 

 Severn, all set with the mouths upstream. During one visit to these traps he saw seven 

 fish taken all with their head fixed in the puts and directed downstream, and therefore 

 concludes that when captured they must have been descending the river with the ebb 

 tide. In a footnote Day ssljs : 'Three views concerning these migrations were held at a 



meeting of the Dee Conservators at Chester in December, 1884: (1) That salmon 



run up with the flood tide; (2) That they rest during the flood tide, and run up with the 

 ebb; (3) That they allow themselves to be carried up with the stream of the flood-tide, 

 with their heads toward the sea, and that when the tide begins to ebb they turn, and 

 continue their course against it.' 



The latter statement is more in accord with the head-to-current impulse, elsewhere 

 referred to, also with the observations upon the movements of the Sacramento salmon 

 by Rutter and the recent idea advanced by Roule regarding the oxygen 'tropism.' 

 The manner of capture referred to by Day would not appear to conflict with the idea 

 that salmon ascend with the ebb and descend with the flood. If it is a fact, which it 

 seems to be, that in the bays, estuaries, and tidal portions of rivers salmon are feeding 

 during the spring approach to the rivers, and, as it is well established, that most fishes 

 feed against the tide, or current, it is to be expected that the ascent would be on the 

 ebb tide and any descent would be on the flood. But, as Day says on page 69 'the 

 period arrives when these fish consider it necessary to migrate from the tidal portion of a 

 river and ascend into the fresh waters, where, instead of going with the tide, they have 

 to pass on against the stream.' 



According to Atkins (1874, p. 333) : 



'In approaching the rivers, salmon swim near the surface, and are not inclined to leap 

 into the air. In the early part of the season they appear to move at a greater distance 

 from the shores than they do afterward, so that they frequently pass aU the pounds and 

 weirs of the estuaries and are first taken in the rivers, where the contracted breadth 

 of the water or some other cause induces them to run near shore. At the height of the 

 salmon season, however, they appear to be coasting along very near the shore, so that 



