54 REPORT OF STATE BOARD OF FISH COMMISSIONERS. 



abundant, is worth much more than the combined value of the three 

 remaining species of salmon. 



The fall salmon of all species, but especially of the Dog salmon, 

 ascend streams but a short distance before spawning. They seem to be 

 in great anxiety to find fresh water, and many of them work their way 

 up little brooks only a few inches deep, where they perish miserably, 

 floundering about on the stones. Every stream, of whatever kind, has 

 more or less of these fall salmon. 



It is the prevailing impression that the salmon have some special 

 instinct which leads them to return to spawn in the same spawning 

 grounds where the}^ were originally hatched. We fail to find any evi- 

 dence of this in the case of the Pacific Coast salmon, and we do not 

 believe it to be true. It seems more probable that the young salmon 

 hatched in any river mostly remain in the ocean, within a radius of 

 twenty, thirty, or forty miles of its mouth. These, in their movements 

 about in the ocean, may come into contact with the cold waters of their 

 parent rivers, or, perhaps, of any other river, at a considerable distance 

 from the shore. In the case of the Quinnat and the Blue-back, their 

 "instinct" seems to lead them to ascend these fresh waters, and, in a 

 majority of cases, these waters will be those in which the fishes in ques- 

 tion were originally spawned. Later in the season the growth of the 

 reproductive organs leads them to approach the shore and search for 

 fresh waters, and still the chances are that they may find the original 

 stream. But undoubtedly many fall salmon ascend, or try to ascend, 

 streams in which no salmon were ever hatched. In little brooks about 

 Puget Sound, where the water is not three inches deep, are often found 

 dead or dying salmon, which have entered them for the purpose of 

 spaw^ning. It is said of the Russian River and other California rivers, 

 that their mouths, in the time of low water in summer, generally become 

 entirely closed by sand-bars, and that the salmon, in their eagerness to 

 ascend them, frequently fling themselves entirely out of water on the 

 beach. But this does not prove that the salmon are guided b)^ a marvel- 

 ous geographical instinct, which leads them to their parent river in spite 

 of the fact that the river cannot be found. The waters of Russian River 

 soak through these sand-bars, and the salmon instinct, we think, leads 

 them merely to search for fresh waters. This matter is ixiuch in need 

 of further investigation; at present, however, we find no reason to 

 believe that the salmon enter the Rogue River simply because they 

 were spawned there, or that a salmon hatched in the Clackamas River 

 is more likely, on that account, to return to the Clackamas than to go 

 up the Cowlitz or the Des Chutes. "At the hatchery on Rogue River 

 the fish are stripped, marked, and set free, and every year since the 

 hatchery has been in operation some of the marked fish have been 

 recaught. The young fry are also marked, but none of them have been 

 recaught." 



In regard to the diminution of the number of salmon on the coast, 

 Dr. Gilbert and myself published in 1880, in the report of the United 

 States Census Bureau, the following observations: "In Puget Sound, 

 Fraser River, and the small streams, there appears to be little or no 

 evidence of diminution. In the Columbia River the evidence appears 

 somewhat conflicting. The catch in 1880 was considerably greater than 

 ever before (nearly five hundred and forty thousand cases of forty-eight 

 pounds each having been packed), although the fishing for three or 



