SALMON FISHING DESCRIBED. 65 



Passing Grove's shop in Bond Street about a month 

 agol remarked an immense fish extended in the window ; 

 I stopped to inquire what its weight might be, and was 

 informed that it weighed forty-five pounds. It had 

 been a little too long on its passage from Scotland, 

 and I should be inclined to say that at best, it was a 

 coarse-flavoured fish, but in its present state, a most 

 indifferent one. 



The migratory habits of the salmon, and the instinct 

 with which it periodically revisits its native river, are 

 curious circumstances in the natural history of this fish. 

 As the swallow returns annually to its nest, as certainly 

 the salmon repairs to the same spot in which to deposit 

 its ova. Many interesting experiments have estab- 

 lished this fact. M. de Lalande fastened a copper ring 

 round a salmon's tail, and found that for three successive 

 seasons it returned to the same place. Dr. Bloch states, 

 that gold and silver rings have been attached, by Eastern 

 princes to salmon, to prove that a communication 

 existed between the Persian Gulf and the Caspian and 

 Northern seas, and that the experiment succeeded. 

 Shaw, in his Zoology, mentions that a salmon of seven 

 pounds and three-quarters was marked with scissors 

 on the back, fin, and tail, and turned out on the yth of 

 February, and that it was retaken in March of the 

 succeeding year, and found to have increased to the 

 amazing size of seventeen pounds and a half. This 

 statement, by the by, is at variance with the theory 

 of Dr. Bloch, who estimates the weight of a five or six 

 year old salmon at but ten or twelve pounds. 



That the salmon should lose condition rapidly on 

 quitting the sea for the fresh water, may be inferred 

 from a fact agreed upon by naturalists, that during the 



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