NORTHERN MEMOIRS. 151 



flames fly all about. Now you are to consider 

 that the race of salmon, especially the female in 

 the vernon ^equinox, is for the most part pick- 

 ing and casting against the rapid streams. And 

 in this river Errit it's always observable, there 

 are plenty of stumpy knotty rocks, to which the 

 native, without difficulty, can pass and repass 

 from one rock to another ; and the rather to fa- 

 cilitate this mortal design, they set the pot on 

 some seeming floating rock, to which (as I am 

 told) their observation directs them ; which 

 rock, it may be, is almost drown'd in water. 

 Now this artifice is no sooner perform'd by the 

 rude engineer, but the salmon, because casting 

 after her usual manner, often casts away her life, 

 by leaping into the pot instead of the pool. 



Theoph. I cannot approve of this murdering 

 artifice. 



Arn. Nor I neither ; but the manner of ac- 

 tion is thus performed. For the salmon, you 

 must know, by reason of agility of body, (and 

 considerable strength) so bends and contracts her 

 self, by taking her tail (as suppos'd) in her teeth ; 

 then, like a well-tempered spring that suddenly 

 and smartly unbends and flies off ; even so doth 

 the salmon, with a strange dexterity, mount the 

 air (out of the water) an incredible height ; but 

 because unprecautioned how to distinguish the 



