SALMON LIFE. 163 



Among the most important bony fishes must certainly be first placed the salmon, 

 which includes three well-known species, Salmo salar (the salmon itself), S. fario (the 

 salmon trout), and S. trutta (the trout). The early life of the salmon is interesting-. The 

 infant fry is primarily, of course, very helpless, and during the first two or three weeks 

 of its existence carries about with it, as a provision for food, a portion of the yolk of the 

 egg from which it was hatched. This generally lasts it from twenty to forty days. It 

 is two years before the youngster ventures out to sea. In the first stage the young salmon 

 is called a parr ; during the second it is a smolt, i.e., a parr plus a covering of silvery 

 scales. The smolt> which in the course of its two or more years' stay in the river has 

 only attained a growth of six or eight inches, returns from the sea in a couple of months 

 weighing three or four pounds, and after six months ten or twelve pounds. It is now 

 a grilse. 



Dr. Bertram says of the salmon's growth : 



" The sea-feeding must be favourable, and the condition of the fish well suited 

 to the salt-water to ensure such rapid growth a rapidity which every visit of the 

 tfish to the ocean serves but to confirm. Various fish, whilst in the grilse state, have 

 been marked to prove this; and at every migration they returned to their breeding- 

 stream with added weight and improved health. What the salmon feeds upon whilst in 

 the salt-water is not well known, as the digestion of the fish is so rapid as to prevent 

 the discovery of food in their stomachs when they are captured and opened. Guesses 

 have been made, and it is likely that these approximate to the truth ; but the old story 

 of the rapid voyage of the salmon to the North Pole and back again turns out, like 

 the theory upon which was built up the herring migration romance, to be a mere myth. 



" None of our naturalists have yet attempted to elucidate that mystery of salmon 

 life which converts one-half of the fish into sea-going smolts, whilst as yet the other 

 moiety remain as parr. It has been investigated so far at the breeding-ponds at 

 Stormontfield, but without resolving the question. There is another point of doubt as 

 to salmon life which I shall also have a word to say about namely, whether or net 

 that fish makes two visits annually to the sea; likewise, whether it be probable that 

 a smolt remains in the salt water for nearly a year before it becomes a grilse. A 

 salmon only stays, as it is popularly supposed, a very short time in the salt water ; and 

 us it is one of the quickest-swimming fishes we have, it is able to reach a distant 

 river in a very short space of time, therefore it is most desirable we should know what 

 it does with itself when it is not migrating from one water to the other; because, 

 according to the opinion of some naturalists, it would speedily become so deteriorated 

 in the river as to be unequal to the slightest exertion 



" At every stage of its career the salmon is surrounded by enemies. At the very 

 moment of spawning, the female is watched by a horde of devourers, who instinctively 

 flock to the breeding-grounds in order to feast on the ova. The hungry pike, the 

 lethargic perch, the greedy trout, the very salmon itself, are lying in wait, all agape for 

 the palatable roe, and greedily swallowing whatever quantity the current carries down. 

 Then the waterfowl eagerly pounces on the precious deposit the moment it has been 

 forsaken by the fish ; and if it escape being gobbled up by such cormorants, the spawn 



