GETTING READY FOB SEA. 375 



sends only half the shoal to sea at a time ; the remaining 

 part of the shoal will follow next year, or perhaps a few will 

 remain three summers in the river before resorting to marine 



A SMOLT FIFTEEN MONTHS OLD. 



feeding-grounds. In the mean time we lose sight of the first 

 detachment, which falls back from pool to pool, and descends 

 rapids and falls tail foremost until it arrives in the estuary, 

 where it faces to the right about and prepares to protect 

 itself from the monsters of the deep. For some days, and 

 perhaps weeks, it dallies in the lower reaches and estuary, 

 feeding on small caplin, shrimp, and the roe of coarser fish un- 

 til its burnished sides form an armor to protect it against the 

 briny deep. Where the marine feeding-grounds of the sal- 

 mon are it is impossible to state from indubitable data. Sal- 

 mon are sometimes found in soundings off the Isle of Jersey, 

 several hundred miles from any salmon river, and yet in Can- 

 ada the netters capture all their fishes approaching their riv- 

 ers on the north shore of the St. Lawrence from the west, 

 when the sea is at the east. That this genre of fishes, like all 

 others habitually visiting fresh-water streams to spawn, re- 

 turn and enter the rivers of their birth, is well authenticated, 

 while it has been satisfactorily proven that if scared away 

 from the estuary by nets or other unnatural fixtures they 

 will enter other rivers. 



In the physical transmutations of the salmon, from the time 

 it breaks the egg and hides about in crevices with a part of 

 the egg attached to its abdomen, to the time when it fully 

 matures into an adult salmon, there is no form it takes which 

 is so graceful and beautiful as that of the grilse, the last stage 



