184 BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 
appearance, but in the habits of these fish. At first they carried 
red spots like their English ancestors, but these now disappear 
after the yearling stage, and the fish are as silvery as salmon, 
with the x-shaped black spots so characteristic of the migratory 
species. And in Tasmania these descendants of English brook 
trout have thoroughly acquired the sea-going habit. Large 
trout are only to be found in the river Leith during the winter 
months ; the rest of the year they spend in the sea or the 
estuary, where they are taken of large size in nets. Does not 
this seem as if the salmonoid history of tertiary and post-tertiary 
rivers were repeating itself under our very eyes? 
Sus-Genus—SALMONES 
The Salmon (Salmo salar) 
Fins. TEETH. 
First dorsal: 14 rays. Conical teeth on both jaws, all 
Second dorsal: rayless, adipose. along the vomer and palatine 
Anal: 11 rays. bones, and on the tongue, 
Pectoral : 14 rays. none on the pteryoid bone 
Ventral: 9 rays. (at the back of the palate). 
Never was animal more fitly named from its habits than the 
salmon—“ the leaper ’’—from salire, to leap ; for it cannot be 
long in a river without betraying its presence by throwing itself 
out of the water, falling back with far-resounding splash. 
Truly, an adult salmon, fresh from the sea, is one of the most 
perfectly beautiful of living creatures. Nor does it owe its 
beauty to gorgeous colouring or complicated form ; but to 
purity of silver mail, to subtle, yet simple, curvature of contour, 
and to that concentrated grace which consists in the perfect 
adaptation of every organ to a life of intense activity 
and energy. 
But that applies only to the salmon in one of the numerous 
phases through which it passes, not only within the span of 
