IMPORTANT EVIDENCE 179 



has always appeared to me to be an open question as 

 to the causes which have produced this condition in 

 the smaller fish. The contributor to the Fishing 

 Gazette mentioned above considers it due to the action 

 of the gastric juices, and if this is so these gastric 

 juices must have been in the throat, and not in the 

 stomach ; he ignores the effect of the vomeral bone 

 and teeth, throat pressure, and muscular action, to 

 say nothing of the laceration of the other teeth. 



IMPORTANT EVIDENCE 



While fishing Mr. George Beck's stretch of the 

 Evanger River, Norway, in 1899, Mr. Arthur Welling- 

 ton Naylor hooked a fresh-run 20-pound salmon 

 forty miles from the sea, and having no lice on it. 

 The triangle of the lure which he had been using 

 was fixed in the upper and lower jaw of the fish, 

 completely closing its mouth. After the fish was 

 gaffed, the tail of a parr 4 inches long, half 

 digested, was seen protruding from its mouth. This 

 happened in July. This evidence is important. 

 The parr had apparently been swallowed, and the 

 fact that no sea-lice were on the salmon argued that 

 the salmon had been some days out of salt water. 

 It is by no means an uncommon thing for salmon 

 to clear forty miles of the lower stretches of a river 

 with sea-lice on them. I myself have killed salmon 

 fifty miles from the sea having sea-lice on them. 

 The deduction which can be made from this fact 



122 



