MAY 151 



went to the sea to obtain, the salmon loses the power of 

 assimilating food, owing to rapid degeneration and 

 sloughing of the epithelial cells on the whole of the 

 digestive tract, whereby the whole stomach becomes 

 absolutely functionless. 



Dr. J. Kingston Barton has written in the Journal 

 of Anatomy and Physiology (vol. xxxiv.) throwing 

 doubt upon some of the conclusions arrived at by the 

 Edinburgh committee. He maintains that the slough- 

 ing and desquamative catarrh is not apparent in the 

 stomachs of salmon freshly caught ; that the epithelium 

 remains perfectly normal in living salmon, even up to 

 the very eve of spawning; and that the Edinburgh 

 physicians were deceived by post-mortem changes 

 which proceed more rapidly in fish than in more 

 highly organised vertebrates. Dr. Barton adduces the 

 result of the microscopic examination of the internal 

 organs of a red male salmon caught in the Fowey in 

 November with the milt ' within a very few weeks of 

 full growth.' He found the epithelium and digestive 

 tract to be perfectly normal, and maintains that this is 

 ' really conclusive of a serious fault in the preparations 

 of the Edinburgh laboratory, and indicates an error in 

 the deduction drawn from them.' But this error does 

 not, in Dr. Barton's opinion, in the least affect the 

 question as it concerns the angler. Dr. Barton is as 

 firmly convinced as Dr. Noel Paton that salmon do 

 not feed in fresh water, but undergo a 'prolonged 

 physiological fast.' Neither does he differ from the 

 explanation offered by the Edinburgh committee of the 



