JANUARY 19 



same species. Adventurous individuals of the trout 

 kind dropped into the estuaries of post-pliocene streams 

 in search of food, just as they may be observed to do at 

 this day, whence the boldest and strongest of them 

 pushed on into the ocean, where food of the richest 

 kind is most abundant. They got over the preliminary 

 qualms of sea-sickness, throve abundantly, their com- 

 plexion changed, they acquired all the airs of pelagic 

 fish, and despised the timid landsmen. There is, in 

 truth, less outward difference between a salmon in his 

 dark winter dress and a yellow trout than there is 

 between an A.B. seaman and a Hampshire ploughman, 

 or between a dowager arrayed for a Court Drawing- 

 room and the milkmaid who made syllabub for Izaak 

 Walton. 



If this be so, it is easy to understand why salmon 

 show such indomitable energy in ascending to the head- 

 waters where they were born, hastening away again as 

 soon as the domestic task is over, to surfeit once more 

 on marine dainties. But it does not explain why, at 

 this season, nine months before the earliest spawn is 

 ripe, they should desert the waters of plenty and enter 

 icy Highland torrents, where there is not food to 

 sustain one in a hundred of them. And, be it noted, 

 for every fish that runs up British rivers under existing 

 conditions, a thousand would ascend but for net-fishing. 

 It cannot be in search of food that they leave the tide, 

 as the researches of Herr Miescher into the life-history 

 of Rhine salmon have gone far to prove. That patient 

 observer testifies to the steady absorption of the pro- 



