24 THE SALMON FISHEK. 



sumable dearth in those waters of the fish food upon 

 which salmon fatten previous to entering rivers to 

 spawn, and which recent observation has discovered 

 to consist largely of Crustacea such as shrimps, 

 prawns, and mysis, as well as of annelids or sand 

 worms, of herring sile, cephalopoda and floating in- 

 vertebrata. Low temperature of itself would pre- 

 sent no interposition to the salmon, for the colder 

 the water the larger their size and the better their 

 quality. "When fish get direct access to a river the 

 moment the ice goes out in the spring, the larger 

 they are and the finer in flavor. When the ice has 

 gone out a month or two before the run begins, the 

 fish are smaller and inferior because the water has 

 had time to get warm. It is so on the Pacific as 

 well as on the Atlantic. In the Port Medway River, 

 in Nova Scotia, the run is in February; in the Yu- 

 kon, Alaska, it occurs early in May; in the Godbout, 

 on the Lower St. Lawrence, it takes place in June, 

 and there the fish are notoriously small. In the 

 Sacramento and other California rivers both the size 

 and flavor are impaired by the low latitude. The 

 salmon of the Columbia are by no means as fine or 



