28 A RIVER OF NORWAY 



The question whether salmon feed in fresh 

 water, which has excited much acrimonious 

 controversy, turns on the definition of the 

 word "feed." Certainly adult salmon do not 

 eat enough food in rivers to support life, be- 

 cause it is not there; and the race of salmon 

 has accordingly learnt to find its sustenance 

 elsewhere. But that they more or less eagerly 

 take into their mouths such edible morsels as 

 come in their way is a fact on which the 

 angler's practice is based. A Scottish College 

 of Physicians has somewhat hastily assumed 

 that salmon do not feed in fresh water, because 

 their stomachs after death are collapsed and 

 shrunken ; but a plea that his digestive organs 

 were out of order would seem a weak defence 

 for a salmon charged with taking a prawn into 

 his mouth with intent to devour it. 



I believe the actual fact to be this, and I 

 know many anglers will support my view, 

 that fresh-run fish, not yet thinking of spawn- 

 ing, and kelts, which have completed the 

 process, will feed greedily on such food as they 

 can find ; but that fish, when preparing for 

 the spawning season, do undergo a physiological 

 change which renders them unable or unwilling 



