MIGRATION, 785 



indomitable courage and perseverance; but its strength is soon fully- 

 taxed in surmounting the obstacles and in fighting the rivals which 

 oppose its progress, until at last, worn and thin, torn and mangled 

 by battle, and battered by rocks and whirlpools, with its skin in 

 rags, its fins crippled and bleeding, and its whole body from nose 

 to tail bruised and emaciated, nothing of its kingly nature remains 

 except the indomitable impulse, which no hardship can quench, still 

 urging it upward, until, if any life is left, it at last reaches the breed- 

 ing ground. 



One of the most magnificent species of this kingly genus was so 

 abundant in the Columbia River before canning houses had reduced 

 its numbers, that the town reaches were packed with salmon, while 

 the surface was covered with the drifting bodies of those that had 

 perished in fierce struggles with the crowd; yet there is good au- 

 thority for the assertion that not a single one ever returns alive from 

 the breeding grounds in the head waters of the St. Cloud. The 

 whole race is wiped out, utterly exterminated, as soon as it arrives at 

 maturity and physical perfection, in order that the perpetuation of 

 the species may be assured. The whole object and end of the 

 beautifully co-ordinated body, which is provided for by such admi- 

 rable and wonderful adaptations, which is built up so slowly and at 

 so much cost, is rapid and total destruction. 



The marvelous instinct which leads the young fish to the ocean, 

 the organization and the habits which fit it for its marine life all, 

 in a word, which makes of the salmon our ideal of a lordly fish is 

 worth nothing as compared with the welfare of generations yet 

 unborn. 



Scientific men who are not zoologists are fond of telling us that 

 science has nothing to do with the Why? and is only concerned with 

 the How? and while this may perhaps be true in the ultimate or 

 philosophical sense of the words, it is often easy in zoology to discern 

 why an action is performed, while we are very ignorant of the struc- 

 tural conditions under which it takes place. 



As all the individual California salmon seem to act alike, and 

 as the young salmon has no parental instruction, it seems probable 

 that everything it does is the result of its structure or of such nur- 

 ture as this structure provides for; and yet we may safely say that no 

 one now living is at all likely to discover or to predict its migration 

 from the study of its body, although the reason why the migration 

 takes place is obvious. 



Whole books, and not a few of them, have been devoted to 

 learned speculations on the nature of the impulse which leads to the 

 migration of birds, and while the subject is most fascinating, the 

 value of the results has not in all cases paid for the labor. 



TOL. LII. 58 



