NATURAL HISTORY 13 



That's to full compass drawn, aloft himself does throw, 

 Then springing to his height as doth a little wand 

 That, bended end to end, and started from man's hand, 

 Far off itself doth cast ; so doth the salmon vault.' 



Mr. Day, in his book already quoted, gives a clear 

 jump of six feet as probably as much as a salmon 

 under ordinary conditions could accomplish, but 

 quotes, in a note, Swift's 'Travels in Iceland,' who 

 declared, that from personal observation he knew that 

 they were able to dart themselves nearly fourteen feet 

 perpendicularly out of the water, and Professor 

 Landmark, who in 'Nature,' August 16, 1885, stated 

 that he had witnessed their jumping sixteen feet per- 

 pendicularly. I have certainly myself never seen a 

 salmon jump more than six feet direct, if as much. 

 There are two curious snapshot photographs of 

 salmon leaping at a fifteen-foot fall, reproduced in 

 ' Scribner's Magazine' for September 1897, but it is 

 obvious these leaps are at the head of a rapid, and 

 not directly perpendicular. 



' His growth is very sudden : it is said that after 

 he is got into the sea, he becomes, from a samlet not 

 so big as a gudgeon, to be a salmon in as short a time 

 as a gosling becomes to be a goose. Much of this 

 has been observed, by tying some riband or some 

 known tape or thread, on the tail of some young 



