Appendix. 377 



"If there be one circumstance more than another that might seem to 

 militate against the facts I have related, it is the waste of life which is 

 implied, so different from the economy winch Nature generally adopts, 

 in regard to animals occupying this scale in the wonderful order of 

 creation. Breeding but once in the course of their lives, the supply is 

 constantly in the process of renewal, and consequently more subject 

 to occasional derangement from accidental causes than it otherwise 

 would be. 



" Upon this principle, indeed, the partial failure of the supply which 

 occasionally occurs in Fraser River might satisfactorily be accounted for. 

 It has been asserted that this partial failure recurs at certain regular 

 intervals; by some limited to cycles of four years, by others to a longer 

 period. The very fact of this diversity of opinion shakes confidence in the 

 conclusions of either party ; and for my own part I must confess that I am 

 sceptical as to both. My own observation, supported by a careful collation 

 of all the old official journals dating from the first settlement to which 

 I have had access at the different posts of the interior, leads me to the 

 conclusion that the failures alluded to are too irregular to be referred to 

 any fixed principle. 1 conceive them to be owing to latent and accidental 

 causes which it were vain to seek to penetrate ; and I infer that some 

 fortuitous coincidence must have been too hastily adopted as a general 

 rule. 



"The general habits of the Pacific salmon differ in no obvious respect 

 from those of the Atlantic varieties ; their food, too, I conceive to be the 

 same. It is by no means easy, however, to decide this latter point, 

 Digestion with the salmon is so rapid, that upon examining the intestines a 

 mucous substance alone is found, showing no recognisable trace of its 

 original composition. Flies and certain aquatic insects doubtless afford 

 them sustenance; but the fact of there being no solid remains apparent in 

 the intestines of the fish has given rise to a notion among the natives that 

 they exist without palpable food of any kind.'' * 



" Subsequently to the period when the above notes were written. I have 

 hail the opportunity of examining the fish as caught in the sea. In some 

 I have found prawns, in others herrings; and in one instance recently 

 I counted twenty- four smelts, when the process of digestion had scarcely 

 commenced." 



* " On asking the natives of the interior to account for the reason of the 

 salmon jumping, obviously after flies, the)' have an answer to solve the difficulty 

 which is rather ludicrous. They are fully persuaded that they do so in order to 

 ascertain what progress they have made ; and, in short, to take a sly observation 

 so as to find their way. " 



