408 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



Rivers and some of their smaller tributaries, deposit their 

 spawn, and in June go out to sea again. They come in lean 

 and go out lean, but in the late winter and early spring they 

 are fat. There are two common popular errors : that the sal- 

 mon do not eat after leaving the sea, and that they never get 

 back alive. The former error is owing to the fact that no 

 large articles of food are found in its stomach ; and the latter 

 to the fact that when going out all are lean, and that many 

 are found dead along the banks of salmon-streams. But the 

 salmon find their chief food in minute animalculae, and not in 

 fish, for catching which they seem to be so well fitted, with their 

 large mouths and sharp teeth. It is well known that the 

 salmon bite like trout, and furnish excellent sport in clear 

 water to the skillful fisherman with the fly. They dislike the 

 mud with which the streams emptying into San Francisco Bay 

 are filled by the miners, and therefore do not go far from the 

 sea or ascend the small tributaries ; but elsewhere they as- 

 cend every little brook, up to points where there is scarcely 

 enough water for them to swim ; and in these expeditions they 

 are so much exhausted and bruised that they soon die ; but 

 the number thus killed is as nothing compared with those 

 which go out to sea again. The female salmon, having found 

 a suitable place, uses her nose to dig a trench in the sand 

 about six feet long, a foot wide, and three inches deep, and 

 having deposited her spawn in it, throws a little sand over it 

 with her tail, and departs, leaving her eggs to be hatched and 

 the offspring to be fed as best they can. In the month of 

 May the young salmon are found on their way to the sea, 

 from three to six inches long. It is supposed that the salmon 

 always return to the river in which they were born : so that 

 the salmon born in the Klamath River never enter San Fran- 

 cisco Bay, nor do those born in the Sacramento and San Joa- 

 quin Rivers ever enter Humboldt Bay. Although the sea- 

 son in which salmon are abundant in the rivers extends from 

 November to June, yet some of them are found in the 



