154 DO SALMON FEED IN FRESH WATER ? 



as it were, pulled out eight spring fish What do they 

 take them for if not to eat ? Well, it must be confessed 

 that there is a difficulty in explaining this ; but I do 

 not consider the two facts the inability to digest, and 

 the capricious readiness to swallow at all irreconcil- 

 able. They cannot, indeed, be irreconcilable, because 

 they co-exist. The simplest solution is probably the 

 true one namely, that even a physiological fast is 

 compatible with occasional and irregular impulses of 

 appetite, which exactly corresponds with the well- 

 known capriciousness of salmon in taking any lure; 

 that the loss of digestive power does not necessarily 

 imply suspension of the senses of smell and taste, thus 

 accounting for the preference of a real prawn to a 

 sham one ; and that such digestible substances as greed, 

 spasms of appetite, or predatory habit cause the salmon 

 to swallow objects which cannot be digested in the 

 existing state of the stomach, and must be rejected. 



Incidentally Dr. Kingston Barton brings out one very 

 interesting fact in the habits of the salmon. In the 

 course of 1899 he examined nearly two hundred salmon, 

 and the contents of their stomachs. In one of these 

 he found the stomach distended with six full-grown 

 herrings. That nearest the mouth had scarcely changed 

 in appearance, the others were in a graduated state of 

 digestion down to the sixth, of which only the spinal 

 column remained. The remarkable feature is to be 

 noted that all these fish had been swallowed tail fore- 

 most! 



