62 GLIMPSES OF NATURE. 



salmon is, of all our British fishes, the most notable, 

 whether we regard it in its zoological or in its purely 

 social phases. True, the herring runs the salmon very 

 close indeed as a competitor for public favour. I have 

 heard people, years after the event, recall to remem- 

 brance the flavour of the Loch Fyne herrings they 

 had had served up to breakfast on board the floating 

 palaces owned by Mr. MacBrayne of Clyde and Oban 

 fame. Doubtless one may tire very readily of salmon, 

 for it is an oily fish withal ; but it is certainly agree- 

 able enough while the taste for it lasts, although your 

 herring is always welcome, and, properly cooked 

 that is, split open and not fried whole cannot pos- 

 sibly be excelled by any fish that swims. 



However, these are desultory thoughts, and we will 

 own the salmon the sovereign of the finny races, if 

 you will. Like most royal personages, the salmon has 

 a history ; and it is astonishing that so little is popu- 

 larly known of the fish and its biography. True, that 

 history was for long a most debatable matter. The 

 genealogy of the fish was by no means perfectly 

 understood until within relatively recent years, owing 

 chiefly to certain peculiarities which mark the manner 

 of its becoming, and which characterise the fashion 

 in which it spends the days of its youth. 



From a tiny egg the salmon springs, like every 

 other living animal of any respectability as regards 

 rank in the living series. Laid in a kind of trench or 

 furrow made in the gravel of the upper reaches of the 

 rivers by the mother-fishes, the eggs are duly fertilised 

 by the males, and then, covered up by the parents 

 with gravel, the eggs undergo their preliminary stages 

 of development. The spawning goes on in the late 

 autumn and winter months, and may therefore be said 



