NATURE BY THE WATERSIDE 253 



cormorants which were shot at their fishing were 

 found to contain twenty-six and fourteen salmon 

 smolts respectively, and a trustworthy water bailiff 

 asserts that he once watched a couple of cormorants 

 hunt and kill a kelt salmon, and that after dragging 

 it ashore they commenced tearing it up, when they 

 were driven off. It was once thought that both 

 the cormorant and heron only ate that which they 

 could swallow whole, but this is now known not 

 to be strictly correct. 



The fact of members of the SalmonuUe devouring 

 the spawn of their own kind has been already 

 referred to, and unfortunately the practice pike 

 is continued after the eggs are hatched. Kelts 

 The big fish sometimes so terrify the tiny trout and 

 samlets that the latter throw themselves clean out 

 of the water and lie gasping on the pebbles, while 

 the would-be devourer beats about the shallows 

 disappointed at losing his prey ; and the pike is a 

 greater water-wolf still. The pike has been known 

 to increase at the enormous rate of from eight to ten 

 pounds a year when favourably placed for feeding. 

 So voracious a creature is the pike, and furnished 

 with such digestion, that it will destroy a half- 

 pound trout a day for twelve months a terrible 

 drain upon any stream. Then it has an all- 

 capacious maw for silvery smolts as they are 

 making their way down to the sea, and of these 

 at certain seasons it destroys myriads. Of course, 

 pike keep coarse fish under, which are indirectly 

 injurious to trout, and in their way confer a benefit 

 upon the angler. There is another way in which 

 he is beneficial, and that is as a scavenger. A 

 diseased salmon or trout never lives more than a 



