12 SALMON. 



That Salmon will leap a great height I have read, 

 and heard asserted continually ; but even the subdued 

 account which Mr. Yarrell has mentioned, placing their 

 powers of leaping ten or twelve feet perpendicularly, I 

 hold to be beyond the mark. I have frequently watched 

 their endeavours to surmount falls, and I do not think 

 I ever saw a Salmon spring out of the water above five 

 feet perpendicularly. There is a cauld at the mouth of the 

 Leader-water, where it falls into the Tweed, which 

 Salmon never could spring over ; this cauld I have lately 

 had measured most carefully by a mason, and its height 

 varies from five feet and a half to six feet from the level 

 above to the level below it, according as the Tweed, into 

 which the Leader falls, is more or less affected by the 

 rains. Hundreds of Salmon formerly attempted to spring 

 over this low cauld, but none could ever achieve the 

 leap ; so that a Salmon in the Leader-water was formerly 

 a thing unheard of. The proprietors of the upper water 

 have made an opening in this cauld of late years, giving 

 the owner of the mill some recompense, so that Salmon 

 now ascend freely. Large fish can spring much higher 

 than small ones ; but their powers are limited or aug- 

 mented according to the depth of water they spring from : 

 in shallow water, they have little power of ascension ; 

 in deep, they have the most considerable. They rise 

 rapidly from the very bottom to the surface of the water 

 by means of rowing and sculling, as it were, with their 

 fins and tail ; and this powerful impetus bears them up- 

 wards in the air, on the same principle that a few tugs of 

 the oar make a boat shoot onwards after one has ceased 

 to row. It is probably owing to a want of sufficient depth 



