48 Sweden. 



the money to kill that Mr. Lloyd's fish did, I will leave the reader 

 to judge for himself, looking at both sides of the question, which 

 water he would prefer to visit. 



I will conclude this chapter with a few remarks on the northern 

 salmon-rivers, which may not be uninteresting to the British angler. 

 One of the most curious facts connected with the ichthyology of the 

 north (if it is proved to be a fact) is this : that whereas all the Nor- 

 wegian rivers flowing into tlie North and Polar Seas, on the north 

 and west coasts of Scandinavia, from Christiana Fjord to the North 

 Cape, are full of salmon, which will rise readily at the fly, I can 

 never hear of any salmon-fisher who has had sport with the rod in 

 any of the hundred magnificent streams on the east coast of Sweden, 

 which empty themselves into the Bothnia, between Stockholm and 

 Tornea. Now, no one denies that there are plenty of salmon in 

 the Bothnia, and precisely of the same habits as the North Sea 

 salmon, yet we seem to have an extent of nearly a thousand miles 

 of coast, through which, perhaps, a hundred salmon rivers flow into 

 the sea, lying, as it were, waste and dormant to the salmon-fisher. 

 And as we are told that nearly every mile of water on the Norwegian 

 coast is taken up by some rich Englishman or another, it will be 

 seen that it is apparently of very little use for any stranger to visit 

 either Sweden or Norway now for tlie purpose of salmon-fishing. 



I believe it is quite true that, although many good salmon-fishers 

 have tried these Bothnian streams, all declare that they could 

 get no sport in them, either with the fly or the bait 5 and 

 yet all say that the Bothnian salmon run quite as large, although 

 inferior in taste, to those taken in either the Cattegat or North Sea. 

 This may probably be owing to the water of the Bothnia having so 

 much less salt in it than that of the North Sea. But the difference 

 of the water would, we should imagine, make no other difference 

 in the feeding habits of the fish than that there might be diflferenl 

 Crustacea and insects on these coasts, and the fish might require a 

 different bait. 



Mr. Lloyd obser\'es that the only solution of the mystery which 

 he has heard is — that the fish in the rivers in question may not bu' 



