THE SALMON. 29 



of the sportsman, we shall not enter upon any elaborate descrip- 

 tion of this peculiar process, but rather content ourselves with a 

 few general observations on the matter. 



Eor the secure and effectual depositions of its spawn, the salmon 

 invariably selects pure running streams, with gravelly bottoms. 

 All slow, stagnant, sluggish, and clayey bedded rivers, are care- 

 fully avoided, or at most very, very seldom entered. In their 

 choice of the stream, the fish never make any very serious mistake, 

 but are conducted by an almost infallible instinct to a safe and 

 suitable deposit, with all the certainty and regularity that experi- 

 ence and reason could themselves confer. Salmon generally swim 

 pretty close to the bottom of the river, and pursue their onward 

 course with rapidity and decision ; and, indeed, some naturalists 

 have affirmed that they frequently run at the rate of five-arid- 

 twenty miles an hour, in waters where they encounter no 

 obstacles. 



When the gill, or male fish, finds a proper place, he works in the 

 ground with his nose, until he has made a hole or bed sufficiently 

 large for the reception of the spawn ; and when this subaqueous 

 nuptial couch is ail prepared, he looks out for his mate, and they 

 jointly take possession of their temporary residence. When the 

 process is finished they both return to their haunts in the river, or 

 dash back to the sea on the first favourable opportunity. This is 

 substantially the state of the case, as far as the mere act of depo- 

 siting the spawn is concerned. It has been more minutely de- 

 scribed by some naturalists and angling writers than by others, 

 but the general result is comprised in the statement now made. 



But here a controversy starts, which has of very recent years 

 been carried on, but without the main questions having been as 

 yet brought to a satisfactory and general decision. What becomes 

 of the salmon-fry when hatched into life? What shape, colour, 

 size do they assume ? How do they regulate their movements ? 

 These are still, in some measure, debateable and unsettled questions. 

 The old opinions used to be these : After the roe had been depo- 

 sited by the parent fish a sufficient length of time in the bottom 

 they had channelled out, it became quickened into life by sonie 

 hidden and inscrutable process, and became salmon fry, which 

 attained a length of from four to seven inches by the months of 

 March or April. They then, in a flooded state of the waters, made 

 their way down to the sea, and in the months ^of June, July, and 

 August, returned again to their native streams, increased by a very 

 rapid growth, and the fattening powers of the salt water, to a 

 weight varying from two to six or seven pounds. 



Every one who has angled in a river where salmon frequent in 

 any considerable numbers, knows, that in the spring months, that 

 is in March, April, and part of May, he meets with immense 

 swarms of smelts, or smoulis, or parr, that these take the artificial 

 fly most greedily, and that they afterwards seem to disappear, or, 

 at least, are but comparatively seldom met with in fishing the 



