TEANSMISSION OF SALMON EGGS TO AUSTRALIA, ETC. 885 



stream wliich supplies the reservoir, and by no possibility have ever 

 been to the ocean. The San Leandro is a coast stream, not exceeding 

 fifteen miles in length, and empties into the Bay of San Francisco. It 

 contains water in the winter and spring, at which time, before the reser- 

 voir was constructed, the salmon sought its sources for the pur^jose of 

 spawning. There was never sufficient water in the months of August 

 or September to permit the fish to reach their spawning grounds. After 

 the construction of the reservoir, large numbers of the salmon that came 

 in fi'om the ocean in January and February were caught at the foot of 

 the dam and transported alive and placed in the reservoir above. The 

 descendents of these fish thus detained in fresh water and not iJermitted 

 to go to the ocean, have so far modified the habits of their ancestors 

 that they now spawn in September, instead of in January and February. 

 Inasmuch as these fish spawn in the McCloud, in the headwaters of the 

 Sacramento, and at the sources of the San Joaquin, in the Sierra Nevada, 

 in September, and in short coast range rivers in January and February, 

 and as, when changed to other waters, their eggs rij)en at a time when 

 the conditions of their new homes are most favorable for reproduction, 

 they show a plastic adaptability, looking to their future distribution, of 

 much iiractical, as well as scientific, importance. 



3. The statistics hereafter given of the temiDcrature of the water 

 through which the Sacramento and San Joaquin salmon pass to reach 

 their spawning grounds, show that they swim for hundreds of miles 

 through the second hottest valley in the United States, during the 

 hottest portion of the year, where the mean temperatiu'e of the air is 

 92° Fahr., and of the water 75°. These statistics have been obtained 

 from the record kept by the Central Pacific Eailroad Company, and are 

 for the months of August and September of the years 1875-'76-'77. They 

 are of importance as showing that the Sacramento salmon will enter rivers 

 for spawning pm^poses where the water is so warm that the eastern 

 salmon (Salmo salar), if it were to meet it, would turn back to the ocean. 

 They are also of importance as illustrating the probabihty that there 

 are many streams on the Atlantic coast, from the Potomac to the Eio 

 Grande, into which this fish could be successfully introduced. 



4. Mr. Livingston Stone, deputy United States fish commissioner, 

 in charge of the government hatching establishment on the McCloud 

 Eiver, reports ofiicially that in his opinion, all of the salmon of that 

 river die after depositing their spawn. This is possibly true j but it does 

 not account for the fact that in the spawning season the McCloud con- 

 tains grilse and fish evidently three, four, and five years old, unless 

 we are to imagine that some salmon, after being hatched and going to • 

 the ocean, remain there two, three, or more years without returning to 

 the parent stream for purposes of spawning. Beyond doubt the salmon 

 that spawn in the coast streams go back to the ocean, as they are fre- 

 quently taken in the lagoons at the mouths of these rivers on their 

 return. Somewhere on the tributaries of the Sacramento or San Joaquin, 



