47 



currents and temperatures ; but what I wish to impress in 

 this paper is that the sea food of the migratory Salmones 

 forms a very necessary preliminary study to the great 

 question of Salmon culture. 



A diagram expressing the art of Salmon culture would 

 contain no broad, hard, rectangular lines, no vivid colouring 

 easy to be understood, but flowing curves traced by the ever 

 varying intensity of the now few now many circumstances 

 whose combination constitute the problem of the migratory 

 Salmones. Temperature and food are here, as with the non- 

 migratory species, the principal factors. The modes of 

 capture and obstructions in rivers also weigh heavily against 

 the increase of Salmon. But when one of our watersheds is 

 sufficiently artificially stocked so that the advantages of the 

 process are brought clearly and directly before the public an 

 alteration in the modes of legal capture will assuredly follow. 



Of obstructions in the river it is difficult to treat ; many 

 upper proprietors prefer good Trout fishing to the pleasure 

 of dragging about a few kelts in spring, and it cannot be 

 too strongly impressed that Trout are most destructive to 

 Salmon spawn, and that Salmon in their turn are after 

 spawning most destructive to Trout. 



I am aware it is very commonly held that Salmon do not 

 feed in fresh water, probably because in common with all 

 large-ovaed Salmonidae the ovaries for from two to eight 

 weeks completely fill the cavity of the abdomen, and should 

 the fish yield to hunger during this time the freshly 

 swallowed food causes the immediate extrusion of the ova. 



If Salmon never fed in fresh water a well-mended kelt 

 would be a superfluous expression in the parlance of 

 fishermen. 



The deduction as to kelts in certain parts of the rivers is 

 obvious. 



