568 THE OCEAN WORLD. 



never feed in fresh water, what is the rationale of their existing there ? 

 Well, the superabundant store of fat deposited in the areolar tissue 

 appears to furnish a material which is functionally homologous to the 

 fatty supply stored hy the Asiatic and African doornba sheep, which is 

 drawn upon to sustain life-action, when neves, avalanches, or a heavy 

 snow-fall imprisons the herbage out-crop. That continued muscular 

 exertion can be sustained without special fatigue on non-nitrogenous 

 diet, Fick and Wislicensus have proved by the recent ascent of the 

 Faulhorn: it is moreover notorious that the chamois hunter and 

 the Hindoo runner prefer fats and saccharoids. Is there any show 

 of reason, then, why the salmon should not maintain its fresh- 

 water muscular tear and wear by a stock of non-nitrogenous fatty 

 material? -That such is the true philosophy of salmon river life is 

 borne out by the following facts : 



1st. So 0on as the exhausting secretions of the milt and roe take 

 place the spent fish turn seaward to recruit. 



2nd. The digestive secretions are not eliminated in the absence of 

 food ; the most recent experience of physiology finds its echo here. 

 Your boxer trains on meat or nitrogenous aliment, but enters the 

 list on hydro-carbons (fats, saccharines, and amylaceous substances). 

 The salmon get into condition by immediately appropriating the 

 albumen of the echinodermal ova, enter their life-struggle of wintry 

 months in river water with an incorporated stock of potential calorific 

 aliment, convertible, as occasion demands, into organic muscular 

 mechanical effort. 



The British rivers in which the salmon abound are the Severn, the 

 Wye, the Tweed, the Tay, the Don, and the Dee, with many of their 

 tributaries, and in Ireland, the Shannon. Besides these, many of the 

 watercourses of lesser note adjoining the coast have been renowned 

 for their salmon fisheries. Some of the Scottish rivers, especially, are 

 famous for the size and quality as well as numbers of salmon. In 

 days not very distant from ours, farm servants made it a condition of 

 their hiring that salmon should not be served to them more than 

 three days in the week. These times are changed. In the districts 

 in which this condition was the most stringently insisted on, the pro- 

 prietors derive a princely revenue from this source alone. The Tay 

 fisheries yield a revenue of seventeen thousand pounds per annum. 

 The Spey, for its length the richest in Scotland, produces twelve 



