CHAP, v.] THE SMOLT ARMY. 189 



stream, by which it is borne to the sea-fed estuary, or the briny 

 ocean itself. And this picturesque tour is repeated year after 

 year, being apparently the grand essential of salmon life. 



It is pleasant, rod in hand, on a breezy spring day, while 

 trying to coax "the monarch of the brook" from his shelter- 

 ing pool, to watch this annual migration, and to note the 

 passage of the bright-mailed army adown the majestic river, 

 that hurries on by busy corn-mill and sweeps with a murmur- 

 ing sound past hoar and ruined towers, washing the pleasant 

 lawns of country magnates or laving the cowslips on the 



SMOLT TWO YEARS OLD. 

 Half the natural size. 



village meadow, and as it rolls ceaselessly ocean-ward, giving 

 a more picturesque aspect to the quaint agricultural villages 

 and farm homesteads which it passes in its course. During 

 the whole length of its pilgrimage the army of smolts pays a 

 tribute to its enemies in gradual decimation : it is attacked at 

 every point of vantage ; at one place the smolts are taken 

 prisoners by the hundred in some well-contrived net, at another 

 picked off singly by some juvenile angler. The smolt is 

 greedily devoured by the trout, the pike, and various other 

 enemies, which lie constantly in waiting for it, sure of a rich 

 feast at this annually-recurring migration. But the giant and 

 fierce battle which this infantile tribe has to fight is at the point 

 where the salt water begins to mingle with the stream, where 

 are assembled hosts of greedy monsters of the sea of all shapes 

 and sizes, from the porpoise and seal down to the young coal- 



