CULTURE OP THE SALMON. 107 



ing this time they feed on smelts, sparlings, and other small 

 fish as well as Crustacea. After entering fresh water no 

 food is to be found in their stomachs; notwithstanding, 

 they will rise occasionally at a natural or artificial fly, and 

 will sometimes take a worm bait. In their journey upwards 

 they generally linger on the way, at the foot of many a 

 rapid or just above, until they reach their native spawning- 

 grounds, or go beyond. They lose the silvery brightness 

 which they bring from sea, and continue to grow darker and 

 fall off as the summer advances. A fish that was a twenty- 

 pounder, when fresh run, in three weeks will be one of 

 seventeen pounds, and so on to the time of spawning, when 

 they have lost half of their weight and are scarcely fit for 

 food. If their native water is some inconsiderable brook, 

 which is frequently the case, they will wait for a rise, or 

 wriggle over shallows scarcely the depth of their bodies. 

 The canoemen who have attended me on my fishing excur- 

 sions, have told me that at spawning time they can be cap- 

 tured with almost any kind of a net; no doubt persons 

 whose object it is to hatch the ova in the States could then 

 procure it in any quantity. 



The spawn of the salmon, as all experiments have shown, 

 can be hatched by artificial appliances as easily as the ova 

 of our brook trout, the term of incubation being somewhat 

 longer in water of the same temperature. I have no doubt 

 that in spring water, uniformly at 50, the time would 

 not exceed fifty or sixty days. In Scotland it has extended 

 to 130 days, and in the almost Arctic winters of the 

 British Provinces it is likely that six months or more is 



