WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 57 



It cannot result from either the quantity or quality of food 

 in the rivers, because it is assumed to be a settled fact that 

 salmon are very light feeders if they feed at all in fresh 

 water. Possibly the difference comes from the greater or 

 less abundance of food found by the fish in their salt water 

 rambles. Far-fetched as this conjecture may be deemed to 

 be by those who are as ignorant of the subject as I am my- 

 self, it may, perhaps, after all, furnish the true solution; 

 because, as the instincts of the fish always bring them back 

 to the rivers where they were hatched, may not the same in- 

 stinct keep them to their own feeding ranges when outside? 

 If so, and if these ranges, like trout waters, vary in the kind 

 and quality of food available, the fact will affect their 

 weight. I simply state this as a hypothesis. If I am at 

 fault, and if any one can solve the problem "by authority" 

 or otherwise, I will be very glad to hear from him. 

 Certain it is that those who have heard much about salmon 

 rivers from those acquainted with them, have heard such 

 phrases as these: "Ye.*, there are plenty of salmon in such a 

 river, but they are small." In such another river we are 

 told: "The fish are in moderate numbers and of fair size," 

 and of others we are told: "The fish may not be as plenty 

 as in some rivers, but they run large," and so on of rivers 

 from one end of the coast to the other. In one where 1 have 

 fished, a 35 pound salmon was not uncommon. The largest 

 fish I ever landed weighed 39| pounds, but I fought a fish 

 for two hours which finally broke away and was taken next 

 morning in a net nine miles below with my fly in his mouth, 

 and he weighed 42 pounds. One gentleman, Mr. Spurr, of 

 St. John, N. B., killed two 40 pound fish in the same river 

 the preceding year. It was in this river, also, that General 

 Arthur killed his famous 50 pound salmon, and where Mr. 

 Dun, his companion, lost a fish after a long struggle, which 

 immediately afterward floated into a net with the evidence 

 of Mr. Dun's ownership in his mouth. This fish weighed 52 

 pounds. 



These monsters were caught in the Cascapedia, a river in 

 which forty fish that I took one season averaged 25 Ibs., 



