PACIFIC COAST FISHES. 363 



Fish Commissioner Livingston Stone, under an arrangement made 

 with our Fish Commissioners, Messrs. Redding, Throckmorton and 

 Farvvell. The spring run of adult salmon in the Sacramento also 

 was the largest known for many years to professional fishermen, 

 fish weighing from fifteen to twenty-five pounds, at times in the 

 city market selling from a quarter to half a dollar each." 



The question whether salmon die after spawning, and before 

 returning to the sea, seems to have been satisfactorily determined 

 by the experiments of Livingston Stone, Esq., of the United States 

 Fisheries Commission, who built a dam over one of the rivers, im- 

 passable to salmon, which, he says, " settled the question finally, 

 and proved beyond a shadow of doubt, that of all the thousands of 

 Sacramento salmon that spawned in the McCloud, not one in a 

 hundred returned to the sea alive." In the Columbia and larger 

 rivers, where the fish have hundreds of miles of journey to perform 

 it is not remarkable that in their tremendous efforts to fulfill the 

 callings of nature in the way of procreation, not only that few 

 should ever survive to return to the sea, but that as many as do 

 reach the headquarters should be able to get there at all. Of 

 those that succeed a very large proportion arrive with their heads 

 battered out of shape by their persistent efforts to surmount the 

 obstructions of the ascent. 



As to what salmon feed on : This mystery has also been 

 solved to satisfaction, so far as the Pacific fish are concerned. 

 While in salt water they eat, and eat ravenously, their food being 

 smelts and other small fish, with some crustaceans. After they 

 enter fresh water they lose their appetite and eat nothing, a good 

 evidence of this being found in the fact furnished by J. W. & Vin- 

 cent Cook, proprietors of the Oregon Packing Co., on the Colum- 

 bia River, who have stated that out of ninety-eight thousand 

 salmon examined by them in 1874, only three had anything in 

 their stomachs, and these three had the appearance of having just 

 left salt water. 



It used to be denied, too, that the salmon of the Pacific coast 

 would take a fly, but the ignorance on this subject arose principally 

 from the fact that strangers did not try them at the proper sea- 

 sons and places, while the resident anglers, who were in the habit 

 of taking them with flies, were altogether reticent on the subject. 



