THE LIFE OF THE SALMON 227 



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 permitted it to sulk, and plunges down- 

 stream with your broken trace trailing from its jaws 

 (see Frontispiece). Strengthened though this instinct may 

 be by after-experience, it represents to the salmon an 

 equivalent for the parental education so wonderfully and 

 carefully 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, or for the wisdom which directs it as it leaps for 

 the first time up and amid the dangers of the towering 

 fall, which sends it, when wounded, 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, familiar with 

 its life history ; but they are written mainly for those who 

 may be anxious to acquire some general information as to 

 the fish they are so anxious to capture, and with the hope 

 that such knowledge as the author has acquired during 

 many years of fishing experience may be of use to them when 

 they find themselves face to face with some unexpected 

 difficulty or problem connected with salmon life. 



Those theories, which offer some new solution for well- 

 known phenomena associated with Salmonidae, are suggested 



