14 THE SALMON. 



A very singular circumstance is to be observed 

 in the salmon as well as in the herring, which is, 

 that on opening them, their stomachs contain no 

 kind of food, either in a digested or undigested 

 state. In mentioning this fact, we only allude to it 

 while they are in our rivers; how it is with them, 

 or on what they feed, during their abode in the sea, 

 we cannot tell; for, from all the enquiries we have 

 made, we never could hear of any being seen or 

 taken at a distance from the shore ; they are, it is 

 true, sometimes caught upon headlands or friths, or 



other ; and the rather to facilitate this mortal design, they 

 set the pot on some seeming floating rock, to which their 

 observation directs them ; which rock, it may be, is almost 

 drowned in water. Now this artifice is no sooner performed 

 by the rude engineer, but the salmon, because casting after the 

 usual manner, often casts away her life, by leaping into the 

 pot instead of into the pool. 



" TH. I cannot approve of this murdering artifice. 



" AR. Nor I neither, but the action is thus performed : The 

 salmon, you must know, by reason of agility of body and con- 

 siderable strength, so bends and contracts herself by taking her 

 tail (as is supposed) in her teeth ; then like a well tempered 

 spring that suddenly and smartly unbends and flies off; even 

 so doth the salmon, by a strange dexterity, mount the air (out 

 of the water) an incredible height ; but because unprecautioned 

 how to distinguish the elements, and perhaps wanting foresight 

 of this imminent danger, she frequently encounters the boiling 

 water, which no sooner she touches but her life is snatched 

 away by the suffocating fumes that immediately strangle him ; 

 and thus the poor salmon becomes a prey to the native." 

 FKANCKS, p. 127. 



