REPORT. 



SALMON (SALMO QUINNAT). 



Before the discovery of the gold mines in California, nearly all of 

 the tributaries of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers were the 

 spawning beds of the salmon. Soon after mining commenced the 

 sediment deposited by gold washing covered the gravel bottoms of 

 the streams, The fish found no proper place on which to deposit its 

 eggs, and after three or four years became extinct in those tributaries. 

 The instinct of the fish leads it to return from the ocean to the stream 

 in which it was born for purposes of reproduction. If this place, for 

 any reason, is rendered unfit, it will not seek a new and appropriate 

 place. In eighteen hundred and fifty the salmon resorted in vast 

 numbers to the Feather, Yuba, American, Mokolumne, and 

 Tuolumne Rivers for purposes of spawning, and many places, such 

 as Salmon Falls, on the American, were named from the abundance 

 of these fish. On the Yuba River, as late as eighteen hundred 

 and fifty-three, the miners obtained a large supply of food from 

 this source. At the present time no salmon enter these streams. It 

 would be safe to estimate that one-half the streams in this State to 

 which salmon formerly resorted for spawning, have, for this pur- 

 pose, been destroyed by mining. As mining is the more important 

 industry, of course, for this evil there is no remedy, other than by 

 artificial means to increase the suppl}^ in those tributaries that are 

 still the resort of these fish. The principal spawning grounds 

 remaining, are the McCloud, Klamath, Little Sacramento, and Pit 

 Rivers in the northern part of the State, and the San Joaquin and 

 Merced in the southern. The short streams entering into the ocean 

 from the Coast Range of mountains from Point Conception, in lati- 

 tude 34° 20' north to the boundary of Oregon, are also spawning 

 grounds for salmon. The fish of the coast streams deposit their eggs 

 in January and February, during the winter rains, when the streams 

 are full, while the salmon of the tributaries of the Sacramento and 

 San Joaquin spawn in August and September, wdien the water is at 

 its lowest stage. The salmon of the short coast rivers do not average 

 as large as the Sacramento salmon, but they are probably the same 

 fish with habits modified to suit the streams to which they resort. 



The salmo quinnat readily adapts itself to a life in fresh water, and 

 reproduces its kind where it has no opportunity to go to the ocean. 

 When the dams were constructed on the small streams that go to 

 make the reservoirs of San Andreas and Pillarcitos — which supply 

 the City of San Francisco with water — as also when the dam was 

 constructed on the San Leandro, to supply the City of Oakland, the 

 young of the salmon that had spawned the year previous to the erec- 



