THE ELUSIVE QUARRY 31 



three grilse caught in Norway were gorged with 

 insects, apparently daddy-longlegs; that certain 

 Norwegians reported half -digested fish as having 

 been found in salmon taken in their nets ; and that 

 a similar story came from Newcastle-on-Tyne. His 

 belief is that the customary emptiness of the salmon's 

 stomach is capable of explanation. He has " often 

 noticed, fishing with natural bait, when a salmon is 

 landed the bait is torn from the hooks and sent up 

 the line a foot or more." " Does not this show," he 

 asks, " that a salmon has marvellous power of eject- 

 ing its food ? Is it not probable that when he gets 

 into trouble, either by being hooked or netted, he 

 will disgorge the contents of his stomach ? A trout 

 that is full of food will, we all know, do so after he 

 is landed and why not the salmon ? . . . The 

 absence of food in a salmon's stomach has been 

 accounted for in one other way. A salmon may 

 have such powers of digestion that whatever food he 

 consumes disappears almost at once." The opinion 

 thus suggested is quoted from the volume on Fishing 

 in The Badmmton Library. The editor of the 

 volume adopts it without reserve. "From my own 

 experience," he says in a footnote, " I fully endorse 

 this. Salmon must feed in fresh water, or they 

 would neither take fly nor bait spoons, prawns, or 

 anything else. Yet I never found anything in their 

 stomachs ; they must eject it when in trouble." 



Which opinion are we to adopt ? 



What may be called the Badminton view is 

 the less impressively stated. Major Traherne does 



