SALMON 



5174 



SALOL 



obstacles commands the admiration of 

 ere. It advances against swift rap: 

 small cataracts with ease and may be seen to 

 leap almost perpendicularly upward over falls 

 a dozen feet high. Sometimes a number of at- 

 tempts to accomplish this latter feat arc un- 

 -ful, but i: until at last it lands 



in tin- waters above or finds tin- task too great 

 for its strength. The occasional salmon de- 

 feated in its effo: mount a cataract dies 

 within a few d; 



journey upstream proceeds, .-ometimes 

 for hundreds of miles, at the rate of two to four 

 <d then spawning time, October 

 or November, has arrived. The female pours 

 forth countless numbers of eggs, into a nest 

 from one to four feet deep which the male has 

 dug in the gravelly bed of the stream. After 

 spawning, the parent pair float downstream, 

 They make no effort to swim, 

 nor to reach the sea. Within a few days- 

 ten days, at the most both males and females 

 die. 



Not until the following April or May do the 

 .Imon emerge from the eggs deposited in 

 the nest by the parent fish. They are less than 

 an inch in length, and for weeks each is nour- 

 ished only by a yolk sac, suspended beneath 

 the body. Gradually the sac is absorbed into 

 the body of the little fish. When it ventures 

 on its journey to the sea, after a period of 

 nearly, if not quite, two years, it is but a few 

 inches in length. 



Flesh of the Salmon. , People who eat canned 

 salmon delight in the conventional orange color 

 of the flesh, and they often assume that healthy 

 salmon have no other color. This is not true, 

 for at different times during a year the tint 

 varies from creamy-white to deep orange. 

 There is no difference in the taste of the vary- 

 ing shades of flesh, but it has been discovered 

 that only the orange tints will be accepted in 

 the markets, especially for canning. The best 

 commercial fish are those taken in the spring, 

 as a rule, for some species are "white-meated" 

 in the fall. The flesh may vary in a single 

 individual; near the head it may be dark, gradu- 

 ally becoming lighter towards the tail, or there 

 may be alternate dark and light streaks running 

 the length of the body. 



Salmon Fishery. The two principal species 

 on the Pacific coast are beyond a doubt the 

 most valuable food fishes in the world, far ex- 

 ceeding the herring and the cod. These are 

 called the quinnat, Chinook or king salmon, 

 and the blueback, also known as the red salmon 



or coho. At almost all seasons they can be 

 taken in nets; the heaviest run begins in early 

 March, when the salmon are about to start mi 

 the long journey to the spawning grounds, and 

 continues without much decrease until nearly- 

 spawning time. In some rivers the run is 

 greatest in late summer and early fall. The 

 Columbia River catch is largely the quinnat ; in 

 Puget Sound, the blueback; in Alaskan waters 

 both species are plentiful. The total catch on 

 the Pacific shores and in tributary ri\ 

 worth more than $20,000,000 a year, mostly 

 quinnats and bluebacks. Other species which 

 are also sought are the silver, dog, and hump- 

 back salmon. 



The quinnat, or Chinook, salmon, weighs, on 

 an average, nearly twenty-five pounds, although 

 specimens weighing nearly a hundred pounds 

 are not rare. The bluebacks are about a third 

 as large, their average weight being from seven 

 to eight pounds. The silver salmon weighs 

 from three to seven pounds; the dog salmon, 

 about nine pounds. The quinnat's body in the 

 spring is silvery, the back has round, black 

 spots, and the head has a metallic luster; the 

 bluebacks are a bright blue above and silvery 

 below; the silver salmon is greenish above, with 

 a few faintly-marked black spots on the back; 

 the dog salmon is a dull silver color in the 

 spring, but it turns to a dirty red tint in the 

 fall. E.D.F. 



Consult Malloch's Life History and Habits of 

 the Salmon, Sea Trout and Other Freshwater 

 Fish; Jordan's Fishes. 



SALMON TROUT, a European species of 

 trout, which is found in salt water but ascends 

 fresh-water streams at spawning time. It is 

 intermediate in structure between the trout and 

 salmon, and, like these, is of great value as a 

 food fish. The same name is also applied to an 

 American species of trout known more com- 

 monly as the steclhead. It is found quite gen- 

 erally in streams of the Pacific coast from the 

 southern part of California to Alaska, and is 

 especially abundant in the lower courses of the 

 Columbia River. The steelhead averages from 

 five to eight pounds in weight, though large 

 specimens reach a weight of twenty pounds. 

 Great numbers are caught in the Columbia and 

 are canned or sold fresh. Because of the value 

 of the steelhead as a food fish it is being propa- 

 gated by the United States Fish Commission, 

 and it has been introduced successfully in Lake 

 Superior. See SALMON ; TROUT. 



SALOL, sal' ohl, or sal' ol, a white crystalline 

 powder composed of salicylic acid (which see) 



