THR SALMON. 155 



Whimsical experiment. 



Ireland there is a cataract about nineteen feet 

 high : here, in the salmon season, many of the 

 inhabitants amuse themselves in observing the 

 fish leap up the torrent. They frequently fall 

 back many times before they surmount it, and 

 baskets made of twigs are placed near die edge 

 of the stream to catch them in their fall. 



At the falls of Kilmorack in Scotland, where 

 the salmon are very numerous, it is a common 

 practice with the country people to lay branches 

 of trees on the edges of the rocks, and by this 

 means they often take such of the fish as miss 

 their leap, which the foaming of the torrent not 

 unfrequently causes them to do. And the late 

 : Lord Lovat, who often visited these falls, taking 

 the hint from this circumstance, formed a deter- 

 mination to try a whimsical experiment on the 

 same principle. Alongside one of the falls he 

 ordered a kettle full of water to be placed over a 

 fire, and many minutes had not elapsed before a 

 large salmon made a false leap, and fell into it. 



AS soon as these fish have arrived at a proper 

 place for spawning in, the male and female unite 

 in forming in the sand or gravel a proper recep- 

 tacle for ther ova, about. eighteen inches deep, 

 which they are also supposed afterwards to cover 

 up. In this hole the ova lie till the ensuing 

 spring, (if not displaced by the floods,) before 

 they are batched. The parents, however, im- 

 mediately after their spawning, hasten to the salt 

 water, now extremely emaciated. Toward the 

 u a 



