66 SPRING SALMON 



hope, and then ping! the single gut snapped and all 

 was over. 



It is bad enough to lose a spring salmon after good 

 play through the hook-hold giving way; it is worse 

 when the loss occurs from broken tackle, even if the 

 angler be not to blame, though there is seldom any 

 valid excuse for him in British rivers. In Norwegian 

 waters such accidents must be discounted as occasion- 

 ally inevitable. But disaster incurred through sheer 

 pigheadedness choosing the wrong way when there 

 is an easy and obvious right one leaves a man feeling 

 as if two or three of his vertebrae had been removed, 

 and none but an angler can understand the mingled 

 sense of shame and despair which is the lasting penalty 

 for a wilful blunder. 



XIX 



Little by little naturalists are adding to the store of 

 spring ascertained fact in regard to the life history 

 salmon an ^ seasonal movements of the salmon, which 

 have hitherto been the subject of much wild specula- 

 tion and a priori theory. The latest advance, a very 

 definite and important one, has been made during the 

 present year (1907) by means of the system of marking 

 smolts, i.e., young salmon, aged from fifteen to twenty- 

 seven months, descending to the sea for the first time. 

 The delicate structure of these little fish has hitherto 

 proved an obstacle to any effective and permanent 

 method of marking them ; but this has been overcome 

 by Mr. Calderwood, salmon-fishery inspector for Scot- 

 land, by the use of silver labels attached by fine wire to 



