[11] PROPAGATION OF SCHOODIC SALMON IN 1879- T 80. 743 



ounces, very ripe with milt, with red spots and bars still very distinct. 

 There are a good many of these here. I have never observed many of 

 them before. Indeed, when the men got me two specimens of that size 

 last season I regarded them as the first I had ever seen. It may be 

 (though not probable) that they have always been present but mistaken 

 by me for chubs or young trout. I think I have always been too much 

 on the alert to be so deceived. By lamp-light their distinctive marks 

 are not visible while the fish are swimming in the water, but by day- 

 light, standing on a pier of the dam, I see one of them in the stream 

 unmistakably marked. 



November 9. — Fish have been coming in slowly and a good many of 

 them are spawning outside of our nets, though few of those we have 

 taken have appeared ripe. I should say that half a dozen pretty good 

 nests have been made at the head of the "west run" (a narrow channel 

 between the shore and the gravels below the dam) and as many more 

 commenced there. Below the lower nets three or four nests are com- 

 pleted, or nearly so, and others begun. That is all below the dam. 

 Above the dam, near the approach to the sluice-gate, one nest is in pro- 

 cess of making, and I see the pair on it to-day. Just above our "dam- 

 net " are, say, eight or ten pretty complete nests. Between that and 

 our upper nets there are, say, ten or twelve nests partially made, of 

 which three or four are nearly complete, besides a dozen spots where 

 fish seem to have been working a very little. Above our upper nets I 

 see about 8 nests, but none of them complete. On the gravels above 

 our spawning-shed fish are now spawning, and I propose to have them 

 fenced off to-night. Some of the fish in our main pound are beginning 

 to spawn. 



Between our dam-net and upper net (a space measuring about an acre) 

 are a good many fish ; I should think 200 or 300. We have tried in 

 vain to drive them up under the lifted nets, and now propose to sweep 

 that pool with a large seine to-morrow. Fish do not run up through the 

 dam from the pool below to any great extent at this time. Since Octo- 

 ber 21 we have had a net stretched across the stream 20 feet above the 

 dam to intercept them, and in the space left between this net and the 

 dam I have at no time seen more than a dozen fish, and only one nest 

 has been commenced there, though it is an excellent spot for spawning. 

 [In 1878 we used this space as a trap for fish descending, lilting the net 

 by a long line leading ashore, and at set hours during the night letting it 

 suddenly fall and entrapping all the fish that had sought this spawning- 

 bed. We could not then determine whether the fish caught came from 

 above or from below, but our experience this season indicates that they 

 came from above, and that the fish that occupy by day the great pooli 

 below the dam seek spawning-beds on the gravels below them, and not 

 above. This is another manifestation of the instinct of the Schoodic sal- 

 mon to move downward instead of upward to seek spawning-ground. 1! 



