138 American Fisheries Society 



which compels birds to return to their ancestral home. If my 

 view be correct, it is the stronger impulse or habit which has 

 prevailed, viz., that relating to propagation, not the weaker 

 one, the mere desire for more abundant food, on which weaker 

 stimulus reliance is largely placed by the advocates of the fresh- 

 water origin of the salmon. Food is by no means wanting in most 

 salmon rivers, indeed, vast schools of trout, and the parr, smolts, 

 and even grilse, of the salmon, experience no lack of food while 

 living in fresh -water, neither does the ouananiche or land-locked 

 salmon.* The greater and lesser whitefishes (Coregoni and 

 Argyrosomi), the lake- and brook-chars (Salvelini) and the 

 graylings (Thymalli) — all Salmonoids, are under no necessity 

 for seeking the ocean in order to avoid starvation, though it is 

 true that food might prove insufficient for the innumerable hosts 

 of Pacific salmon in the western rivers of this continent. Had the 

 sea-migrating habit not been adopted by the various Oncorhynchi, 

 natural laws would have reduced their numbers, no doubt, and the 

 fittest though far fewer in number would have survived. It must 

 be noted, however, that, in some of the interior western lakes, 

 land-locked dwarfed species of Oncorhynchus occur, so that they 

 must find sufficient suitable food. 



Salmon Resemble Other Sea Fish. 



If my interpretation be correct, the salmon is not unique, 

 nor is it abnormal, in its migratory tendencies. Indeed, it has, 

 like other fish, never changed its habit, but repairs to the ancestral 

 breeding localities, regardless of the geological and topographical 

 changes wrought in the course of long centuries. It is true, the 

 surroundings of the shallow, gravelly spawning beds have changed; 

 their former salinity has been exchanged for fresh-water conditions, 

 the spacious bay or creek, washed by the daily tides, or the shallow 

 marine fjord, has become an inland lake, or a river gorge deepened 

 by ice and snow-water floods; but as the connecting channels 



* Sir Herbert Maxwell himself refers to an example of the migratory- 

 impulse in very young salmon, which seems to be fatal to the theory of 

 "freshwater origin." In an early salmon experiment it was found that 

 smolts of the sea salmon prevented from descending to the sea for a year, 

 became so impatient to get to salt-water that "Some of them leaped out of 

 the water and perished on the banks," though food was given them plenti- 

 fully and they were in their supposed natural habitat. — (Salmon and Sea- 

 trout, 1898, p. 222). 



