SPRING SALMON 23 



men. 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 milk- 

 maid 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 High- 

 land torrents, where there is not food to sus- 

 tain 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 proteids, 

 fat, and mineral salts from the muscles by the 

 ovary, which goes on from the moment the salmon 



