SPORTS AND GAMES 449 



Ion, certain of the shooting, wrestling and gymnastic competitions, etc. It is curious 

 that while little or no public support was extended to the British Olympic Committee, 

 and while the state of athletio< in Great Britain furnished hardly any hope for suc- 

 cess in the races, disappointment was loudly expressed by the British press and public 

 when the anticipated results duly came to pass. The Swedish successes were widely 

 distributed, points being gained especially in some of the less universally practised 

 forms of athletics, in Swedish gymnastics, horse-riding, cycling, shooting, driving, 

 \yrestling and yachting. Finland, who came fourth in the order of aggregate with 

 52 points, profited by the assistance of the greatest long distance runner of modern 

 times (Kolehmainen), and did well in discus- thro wing and wrestling. Germany gained 

 47 points; Australasia, Canada and South Africa 42 South Africa producing the 

 winner of the much-esteemed Marathon race as well as the second man, and the win- 

 ner of the curious cycling road-race. France scored only 31 points; Austria-Hungary 

 22; Denmark 19; Norway 16; Italy 13; Belgium u; Russia 6; Greece 4; Holland 3. 

 Entries were sent in, but no successes were obtained, by Iceland, Switzerland, Por- 

 tugal, Luxemburg, Monaco, Servia, Egypt, Turkey, Argentina, Chile and Japan. 

 In the following sections on the progress of particular sports and games l in 1911-12, they 

 are taken for convenience in alphabetical order, with the exception of the final section on 

 American sport. 



'yil'.'. r : ; Angling. 



Within the last few years there has been one remarkable development in the field of 

 salmon investigation. It has been discovered, or rather re-discovered (for Anthony von 

 Leeuwenhoek late in the seventeenth century was the first to suggest it a fact which 

 seems to have escaped notice until.it was lately pointed out by Dr. W. J. Turrell in The 

 Field)], -that it is possible to tell a fish's age from the markings of its scales. This has 

 proved t be easier with salmon than most fish, and the results obtained by investiga- 

 tions have been noteworthy. Messrs. H. W. Johnston and W. L. Calderwood in 

 Scotland, Mr. J. Arthur Hutton and Dr. H. Turnbull in England, and Dr, Knut Dahl 

 in Norway are the workers to whom the new knowledge of salmon is chiefly owed. Mr. 

 P. D. Malloch of the Tay Salmon Fisheries Company has also done good service, and 

 much interesting information is to be found in his book (see below), though some of his 

 conclusions do not find general acceptance with other observers. The result of salrron 

 scale reading, briefly put, is the following view of the fish's life history. The parr usual- 

 ly stays two years in the river (in Norway the river-period is sometimes longer, a fact 

 which may be accounted for by differences of climate); after running down to sea .as a 

 smolt the fish spends at least a year in salt water and it may spend two, three, or even 

 four years there, ascending a river again for the purpose of spawning as a three-year- 

 old, four-year-old, five-year-old or six-year-old, as the case may be. This quite upsets 

 the old idea that a grilse might return after only a few months in the sea. Another old 

 idea must also be relinquished, that salmon spawn every year of their lives. All the 

 data so far obtained go to prove that most of them spawn only once. A proportion 

 (which has yet to be clearly determined) may spawn a second time; at present the data 

 seem to show that this proportion is not more than 10 per cent. A very few may spawn 

 three times in their lives, but so far fish bearing evidence of three spawning seasons on 

 their scales have been very rare indeed. There is obviously a good deal more to be 

 learned, but the main facts cited may be considered proved. When the investigation 

 has gone somewhat further, doubtless fresh problems of a practical nature, such as the 

 treatment of kelts, will arise, but the time for them and for new legislation based on the 

 new knowledge has hardly arrived yet. 



. r ...In other fields of the angler's interest perhaps the most interesting is a revival of 

 wet-fly fishing on chalk streams. The practice as now carried on is really a develop- 

 ment from the dry-fly; and those who practise the method go a step further than dry-fly 

 men by imitating the nymphs of the Ephemeridae and using them under the surface. 

 The book by Mr. Skues mentioned below is the chief authority for the method. 

 1 See the corresponding E. B. headings for general accounts up to 1910. 



