70 MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. 



if we had eyes calculated to see through her grand 

 media and take in the minutiae as well as the ex- 

 panse of her canvas. 



These shrimps are everywhere acknowledged a 

 very nutritious, as well as a savoury dish at table. 

 No wonder then, that the salmon which leave our 

 rivers in the spring in a poor meagre state should 

 so soon again get into grand condition ; and that 

 the slabby white muscle of his body grows red, rich, 

 and incomparable, as the digested substance of five 

 hundred shrimps a day may make it in a month. 



Be this as it may, we are certain that salmon take 

 our fly for something that must nearly imitate what 

 they know to be their food. Or suppose them to 

 have been confined to a situation where they have 

 never seen such species, they would yet seize our 

 fly on sight, as a cat would a mouse, from an in- 

 tuitive impression that it is their natural prey. 

 We may rest assured, however, that it is not a fly 

 of the air, nor a fresh water production that the 

 salmon take it for, as such have never been observed 

 by the fishers of late generations, nor recorded by 

 any of the former ; yet, we may not even now alter 

 its name, but call it still the salmon fly. 



