?■« the Course of Riveis, called Salmon- Leaps. 323 ' 



so dartinglv quick is the ascent of the fish, as rather to re- 

 semble the trau'^ient gleam of a passing shadow over the 

 water, than a real substance penetrating through it. These 

 are probably the causes of all the obscurity in the case. In- 

 deed, when standing at the distance of only a few yards, it 

 requires a very strong and steady eye to catch the evanes- 

 cent figure of the ascending fish, and beholding can alone 

 convey any adequate conception of the rapid facility of the 

 passage upwards. In a few instances I have seen the sal- 

 mon beaten hack, on making the turn at the top ; but that 

 is uncommon, and it rarely occurs that the effort of the 

 fish miscarries. 



This extraordinary ascent of salmon up a perpendicular 

 column of descendinsr water must of course have its limita- 

 tion ; but it would, I believe, be difllicult to assign its limits, 

 or to discover an instance where it fails under admissible 

 circumstances. I know but of two cases wherein salmon 

 can be prevented from ascending rivers which they frequent 

 in furtherance of that great and imperious duty which na- 

 ture imposes on them, and these are when the stream is 

 made to pass through apertures too small for the admission 

 of the fish, or when it does not descend over a fall, without 

 regard to its height, in a sufficiently consolidated and un- 

 broken mass to allow of the salmon swimming up it. 



After accomplishing the great object of their journey into 

 the fresh water, the salmon again descend to the ocean, 

 but so shrunk and wasted by their detention in the rivers, 

 where there is either no proper or no suflRcieucy of food 

 for them, as scarcely to retain a third of their original 

 weight. 



The spawn is deposited in holes purposely made in beds 

 of gravel, and covered with successive layers of the same 

 material? ; and as it becomes animated each individual libe- 

 rates and provides for itself. Their growth is singularly 

 rapid, arriving at six or eight inches in length early if) 

 spring, at which season, the whole, then become immensely 

 numerous, follow the old fish by descending with floods to 

 the Sea. 



lu Cumberland is pursued a very singular species of 

 aqueous salmon hunting, which is not, I believe, practised 

 in any (ilher part of the kingdom. On the fiat coasts of 

 the sea, and adjacent to the mouths of the rivers, as the 

 tide retires, some of the fish remain in the shallow water, 

 that is in water two or three feet in depth. They can b? 

 readily perceived at some distance, from the swell of water 

 X 2 which 



