WONDERFUI. INSTINCT IN FISH, 367 



unfitted for the purposes of the fish, and that it contains no 

 shoals suited for spawning grounds ; for, otherwise, we should 

 expect that every individual fish would visit it at least once, in 

 order to get a taste of its quality, and then, finding it unsuit- 

 able, desert it ; whereas it is not on record that any fish has 

 ever been taken of this species within its embouchure. 



It may be that this wonderfid power is an especial gift of 

 Providence, preventing the fish from wasting too much time in 

 seeking out a haunt, and so losing the season for the propaga- 

 tion of its species, by conducting it, truly as the needle to the 

 magnetic pole, to the stream in which it was bred. 



Be this, however, as it may, certain it is that in all the rivers 

 which flow eastwardly from the provinces into the Northern 

 Atlantic, with every flood-tide a horde of these beautiful fishes 

 run up until they strike the junction of the salt and fresh 

 water, usually at the foot of a fall or rapid, and there remain 

 disporting themselves in the bright eddies, and throwing them- 

 selves quite out of their native element, in pursuit of their scaly 

 prey. 



In these places they will take very greedily any of the Scottish 

 or Irish gaudy lake flies, leaping out of the water to take and seize 

 them, and rising so voraciously and rapidly, that it is found im- 

 possible to fish with above one, or at the most, two flies ; as it 

 is not at all an unusual thing, if fishing with three, to hook at 

 the same moment three several fishes. 



In the Obscache, several years since, Mr. Perley, who visited 

 those waters in his official capacity, accompanied by Captain 

 Egerton, of H. M. 43d Light Infantry, killed three hundred of 

 these fine fish at the junction of the fresh and salt Avater, at the 



