232 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



must be looked to. Public interest a leader who has been there before, 



must over-ride personal profit, and the smolt find their way seaward. In 



makeshifts yield to natural law. We the brackish water of the estuary they 



must serve the year rather than the linger until they are acclimatized, 



hour. Were we to deal with other Countless enemies who know their 



food supplies as we do with this we habit wait for them there, and on 



would soon starve, and richly deserve the margin of the sea. 



it. The marine life of the smolt, like 



A few more salmon left in the water that of the salmon, is not so clear as 



will do all that is needful. To justify that in the river. In its future are 



our greed and repair the waste by bars of shadow and light, of mystery 



hatching out a few eggs is the act of and clearness. That it eats voraci- 



simpletons. The nemesis will appear ously, following the shoals, is all that 



somewhere ; in some way is bound to is absolutely certain. It goes to sea 



come. To say that the artificially to eat, and does it. It grows rapidly 



reared fry are unlikely to make much and enormously, 



difference in the number is only half Because we do not see the process 



the truth : they will enervate the life of growth we find different names for 



of the stream. They will do no good : the stages. We do not so mark the 



they are certain to do mischief. stages of the haddock's growth. The 



If the parr which thus find their salmon tells its tale in chapters each 



way into the basket were left in the with its heading. The smolt comes 



water for a season they would lay out of the shadow of the sea, to the 



aside their dusky bars. Next May or light of its native stream, as the grilse, 



thereabout they would drop down the having grown from ounces to pounds, 



stream as silvery coated smolt. Whether Another belt of shadow, another season 



the migratory instinct is translated of mystery, and the grilse appears as the 



into action without any guidance spring salmon. And then it joins the 



were hard to say. -With or without veterans which come up in the autumn. 



