THE ELUSIVE QUARRY 43 



authorities. The arguments in favour of that opinion 

 are much too weighty to be treated with disrespect. 

 When men so eminent as Mr. Huxley say that 

 salmon quit the sea with masses of stored sustenance 

 sufficient to maintain life without food for a period 

 of months, we must incline to believe them ; and it 

 seems to have been shown, by systematic experi- 

 ments, that while in the river the fish do not increase 

 in weight. 



That, however, is really all that can be said in 

 favour of the modern theory. The arguments on 

 the other side are at least equally considerable. In 

 1891 the Scottish Fishery Board was, through its 

 experts, committed to the statement, that on leaving 

 the sea the salmon underwent a change in the 

 stomach which made the taking of food quite 

 impossible. That statement did not stand the test 

 of evidence. Dr. Barton, who is convinced that the 

 fish do not feed when in the rivers or the lakes, says 

 that he himself has ''proved conclusively that the 

 digestive organs of salmon taken by rod and line in 

 the spring, summer, and late autumn were absolutely 

 normal." The digestive organs being normal, how 

 can we be certain that they have no function ? 

 That would be abnormal, and nature is never syste- 

 matically so. 



There is also, surely, a strangely suggestive in- 

 compatibility between the opinion of the authorities 

 and the language in which they set it forth. Sir 

 Herbert Maxwell, as we have seen, says that it was 

 because the butterfly had been " palatable " that the 



