S THE SALMON 



floodgates and weirs, or ' lost in the fresh waters ' ! 

 The bony gristle not unlike a hawk's beak is not a 

 mark of siekness common to both sexes, but the 

 ordinary and annual adornment of the male, and 

 does not ' hinder his feeding,' if indeed he feeds at 

 all to speak of in fresh water ; and ' skeggers ' if by 

 this word Walton means to designate samlets are 

 young salmon in their silvery or smolt stage, and 

 not exclusively or at all the offspring of salmon 

 which do not go to the sea. I am inclined to 

 think from the context that the author means to 

 include sea-trout with smolts under the general 

 designation of skeggers, as he makes no allusion to 

 them as a separate species. In the only other refer- 

 ence to skegger in his work, he is, however, un- 

 doubtedly referring to smolts : ' In divers rivers, es- 

 pecially that relate to or be near the sea, as Win- 

 chester or the Thames about Windsor, there is a little 

 trout called a samlet or skegger trout, in both which 

 places I have caught twenty or forty at a standing, 

 that will bite as fast and freely as minnows : these be 

 In some taken to be young salmons, but in those 

 waters they never grow to be bigger than a herring.' 



The bony hook which grows on the salmon's lower 

 jaw is still a pu/,/le to the student. Walton says that 

 'if the old salmon gets to the sea, then that gristle 



