38 



Transactions of the Canadian Institute. 



[Vol. IX. 



but, so far as it goes, it furnishes a striking confirmation of the results 

 obtained from a study of the statistics of the annual packs. I may add 

 that an examination of the scales of the fish at my disposal gave entirely 

 negative results. 



We have now completed our study of the life history of the Sockeye 

 salmon and I may restate it concisely, so far as the majority of the fish 

 are concerned. The eggs are deposited in fresh water in the fall of the 

 year and the alevins hatch out in from one hundred to one hundred and 

 twenty days. In the ensuing Spring the fry start on their migration to 

 the sea, where they remain until the Spring or summer of their fourth year 



Fig. 2— The right otohths of four adult ex- 

 amples of 0. nerka. ^howing■ gro\vth 

 ring's. 



of life, when they again return to fresh water and ascend to the spawning 

 grounds. On the completion of the spawning the parent fish, both males 

 and females, die. 



There is one further point, however, of a psychological nature that I 

 would like to consider briefly. It has been maintained that each genera- 

 tion of fish returns to the identical groimds upon which they themselves 

 were spawned. This is certainly an enormous strain on that mysterious 

 faculty which we call instinct. That the young fish, but a few months 

 old, can travel a thousand or even five hundred miles downstream, and 

 that for a great part through rapid rushing water, then spend some three 

 years in the ocean and, finally, retrace this long journey upstream to their 

 original nursery, surely such a supposition requires not a little serious 

 consideration before it can be accepted. True, many birds do something 

 of the same sort, but birds are very different creatures from fish, their 



