THE SALMON 



floodgates and weirs, or ' lost in the fresh waters ' ! 

 The bony gristle not unlike a hawk's beak is not a 

 mark of sickness common to both sexes, but the 

 ordinary and annual adornment of the male, and 

 does not ' hinder his feeding,' if indeed he feeds at 

 all to speak of in fresh water ; and ' skeggers ' — if by 

 this word Walton means to designate samlets — are 

 young salmon in their silvery or smolt stage, and 

 not exclusively or at all the offspring of salmon 

 which do not go to the sea. I am inclined to 

 think from the context that the author means to 

 include sea-trout with smolts under the general 

 designation of skeggers, as he makes no allusion to 

 them as a separate species. In the only other refer- 

 ence to skegger in his work, he is, however, un- 

 doubtedly referring to smolts : ' In divers rivers, es- 

 pecially that relate to or be near the sea, as Win- 

 chester or the Thames about Windsor, there is a little 

 trout called a samlet or skegger trout, in both which 

 places I have caught twenty or forty at a standing, 

 that will bite as fast and freely as minnows ; these be 

 by some taken to be young salmons, but in those 

 waters they never grow to be bigger than a herring.' 



The bony hook which grows on the salmon's lower 

 jaw is still a puzzle to the student. Walton says that 

 'if the old salmon gets to the sea, then that gristle 



