CHAPTER XXIII. 



THE SALMON. 



I NOW approach the great autocrat of fresh water, the so-called lordly 

 salmon (Salmo salar). So much has been written upon this fish by recent 

 ichthyologists that it would be presumptuous on my part to attempt to 

 add new and original information, or to greatly modify what has been so 

 ably laid down as law by our chief salmon-fishers. I shall, therefore, 

 content myself with an outline of the fish's history, and the methods of 

 capture, attended by such remarks as naturally suggest themselves. 



The salmon heads the list of British migratory fishes, of which the other 

 members are the grey or bull trout (Salmo eriox) and the sea or salmon 

 trout (Salmo trutta). By this I, of course, mean fishes descending to the 

 sea periodically for whatsoever purposes. 



Notwithstanding the present fame of this king of fresh fishes, its 

 history is not very ancient. The nations of old were chiefly concerned 

 with the products of the eastern parts of the earth, and to them the 

 Salmo salar was a stranger. The Greeks knew nothing of it, and it is 

 scarcely recognised even by the Eoman writers ; it is fair, therefore, 

 to assume that even the fish eating gourmands of the seven-hilled 

 city did not esteem it. Pliny mentions it (B. 9,0. 32), but then what 

 object of natural history of any consequence at all does not this 

 intellectual observer notice ? He, however, only refers to it as being 

 esteemed by the people of Aquitania, in Gaul. Many of his countrymen 

 must, nevertheless, have been acquainted with it in the rivers of Britain, 

 where they had been peacefully settled from a distant date. Ansonius, 

 in his characteristic poem on the Moselle, is the only other writer that 

 speaks of it, so far, at least, as my reading enables me to say, and I 

 have made diligent search ; and from him we find that the people were 

 aware of distinctions which separate some species of the same family, 

 especially between the salmo and a species he terms the salar, although 



