1 7 2 Po a ch e rs a n d Poa ch ing. 



wide world of waters. Individual eggs may be 

 seen to hatch, and the process is most interesting. 

 First the shell splits at the part corresponding to 

 the back. Then a tiny head with golden eyes 

 appears, and after two or three convulsive waves 

 of his little tail the now useless shells fall from 

 off him. He seems to enjoy the watery element 

 in which he finds himself, for away he swims as 

 fast as his tiny fins and wriggling tail will carry 

 him, round and round in a circle, until presently 

 he sinks down again to the sheltering gravel, for 

 the first time breathing freely by his delicate 

 gills. Every young salmon and trout has a tiny 

 umbilical sac attached, and upon the contents of 

 which it must feed until it has learnt to look out 

 for itself, a period of from six to eight weeks.. 

 Frank Buckland has stated that no other animal 

 increases so rapidly at so little cost, and becomes 

 such a valuable article of food as the salmon. 

 At three days old it is nearly two grains in 

 weight ; at sixteen months it has increased to 

 two ounces, or four hundred and eighty times its 

 first weight ; at twenty months old, after the 

 smolt has been a few months in the sea, it 

 becomes a grilse of eight and a half pounds, 

 having increased sixty-eight times in three or four 

 months ; at two and three-quarter years old it 

 becomes a salmon of twelve pounds to fifteen 

 pounds ; after which its increased rate of growth 



