152 THE INSTINCT OF THE SALMON 



fresh danger, until it attains to its full growth, it is 

 to the natural wisdom of its own instinct that it owes 

 its safety. This instinct is the guiding influence of 

 its whole life, and is as vivid and compelling in its 

 alevin state as when, a full-grown salmon, it rubs 

 your Jock Scott from its jaws against some pebbly 

 bottom, or saws through your cast against the rugged 

 rock at the foot of which you have perchance per- 

 mitted it to sulk, and plunges down-stream with your 

 broken trace trailing from its jaws (see Plate XXIII.). 

 Strengthened though this instinct may be by after- 

 experience, it represents to the salmon an equivalent 

 for the parental education so wonderfully and care- 

 fully imparted to most animal and bird life, and to 

 all humans prior to the age of maturity. 



No education, indeed, no matter how complete, could 

 compensate the salmon for the absence of those 

 mysterious impulses which influence its life, which 

 cause the smolt's migration from, and return as a 

 grilse or salmon to, its native waters ; the wisdom which 

 directs the salmon as it leaps for the first time up 

 and amid the dangers of the towering fall, which 

 sends a wounded salmon away from the deadly 

 contact of the fresh-water micro-organisms to the 

 healing power of the salt water, or guides it back to 

 the mouth of its own particular river after wandering 

 over the trackless bottom of the ocean. 



The following remarks anent the habits and life of 

 the salmon will, perchance, contain some matter new 

 to those who may be, either from experience or study, 



