NATURAL HISTORY 



he would ' go for it ' ; but then the secret of success 

 in salmon-fishing would be a dogged persistency, and 

 instead of resting a rising fish, it would be advisable 

 to keep at him until he could bear it no longer. Of 

 course I do not believe in any such fanciful reason, 

 and have no doubt that flies are taken for food of 

 some description. Although they are not like any 

 inhabitant of the rivers, their appearance and motion 

 greatly resemble that of the Crustacea, which, like our 

 trade prosperity in years unhappily passed, advance 

 by leaps and bounds, and anyone who has seen a 

 shrimp or prawn shifting his ground in a salt-water 

 vivarium, and then watches the ' play ' of a salmon-fly 

 in the stream, cannot fail to be struck by the resem- 

 blance between the two. The motion of the feathers, 

 now closing when pulled against the stream, now 

 opening as the pressure ceases to be felt, is just like 

 that of the numerous legs and appendages with which 

 its prototypes in the sea are so bountifully provided. 

 Salmon doubtless do not feed greedily or regularly in 

 fresh water, but I feel sure that the reason food is so 

 seldom found in their stomachs is that they always, 

 when practicable, eject it as soon as hooked. Mr. 

 Naylor, in a letter to the ' Field ' newspaper dated July 

 1897, records the capture of a salmon of twenty-eight 

 pounds killed on a spoon in Norway. It was hooked 



