FOOD OF THE SALMON. lOL 



cipal support. The stomach of the Salmon is, comparatively 

 speaking, small; and Sir Humphrey Davy asserts that, out of 

 many which he had opened, he never found anything in theii- 

 stomachs but the tape-worms bred there, and some yellow fluid. 

 This peculiarity must, I think, be in a great measure attributed 

 to their rapid digestion. In this they differ greatly from the 

 Salmon Trout, which is constantly found stuffed with food of 

 all sorts, the remains of small fish, beetles, insects, and the 

 sand-hopper {Talitris locusta), which would seem to be their 

 favourite food. 



Dr. Knox states that the food of the Salmon, and that on 

 which all its estimable qualities and, in his opinion, its very 

 existence depends, and which the fish can only obtain in the 

 ocean, he has found to be the ova, or eggs of various kinds of 

 echinodermata, and some of the Crustacea. From the richness 

 of the food on which the true Salmon solely subsists arises, at 

 least to a certain extent, the excellent quality of the fish as an 

 article of food. Something, however, must be ascribed to a 

 specific distinction of the fish itself; for though he has ascer- 

 tained that the Salmon Trout lives in some localities on very 

 much the same kind of food as the true Salmon, yet under no 

 circumstances does this fish ever attain the same exquisite 

 flavour as the true Salmon. 



Dr. Fleming states that their favourite food is the sand-eel. 

 " I have myself," says Mr. Yarrel, " taken the rem.ains of the 

 sand4aunce from their stomach." It is known, moreover, that 

 they are taken in Scotland by lines baited with this brilliant 

 and glittering little fish ; as are the clean-run fish, fresh from 

 the sea, with the common earth-worm. Mr. Yarrel mentions 



