306 SALMON FISHING IN CANADA. 



the cutaneous fat is absorbed. As the excitement of the sexual 

 passion increases, the appetite for food ceases, and the salmon 

 emaciates daily. At length the flesh loses all its nutritive qualities 

 as human food, and becomes to a certain extent poisonous. 



The food of salmon in the sea, whatever it is, is eminently 

 nutritive. The subject is still involved in obscurity, though some 

 clever naturalists have lately paid much attention to it. Dr. Knox, 

 who has written a scientific and able paper on the natural history 

 of the fish, which was published in the Transactions of the Royal 

 Society of Edinburgh for 1834, believes that he has discovered 

 the secret. He avers that salmon in the salt water feed prin- 

 cipally, if not wholly, on the eggs of the Asterias Glacialis, or 

 cross-fish, one of the Entomostraca, or testaceous insects. Now, 

 from the animal's teeth, one might think he lived on more sub- 

 stantial food than almost microscopic ova. But there is positive 

 evidence that cannot be doubted, of sand-eels and small fish 

 being eaten in the sea by salmon. Sir Wm. Jardine*, who made 

 an excursion to Sutherlandshire in 1834, for the purpose of 

 examining the natural productions of the -country, and paid par- 

 ticular attention to the habits of the salmon, states that they are 

 often taken on the Sutherland shores at the haddock lines, baited 

 with sand-eels, and in the Dirness Firth with lines set on purpose 

 with the same bait. And what is quite conclusive on the subject, 

 my friend Dr. Kelly, of the Royal Navy, informs me that in the 

 summer of 1835, when accompanying Capt. Bayfield, R.N., in 

 surveying the Gulf, he saw some salmon, recently caught, opened 

 by the fishermen at Gaspe, and observed three sand-eels and two 

 smelts in the stomach of one of them. Dr. Kelly adds that the 

 fishermen told him this was a common occurrence. 



After entering the fresh water, it has been a question whether 

 salmon eat any food at all ; as the stomachs of many individuals 



* Fourth Eeport of the British Association, p. 613. 



