232 AMERICAN ANGLER'S BOOK. 



comparatively soft, become blue and of a whalebone con- 

 sistency, from stemming the rapids, and from its stay in fresh 

 water. By the time the spawning season is over, it has lost 

 nearly half of its weight, and all of its fine flavor. Then with 

 lank body and big head, bedimmed of its lustre and miserable 

 in appearance, it seeks once more its old home in the ocean, 

 where from the abundance and nutritive quality of its food, 

 it regains its lost flesh and adds some four or five additional 

 pounds to its weight, and when it ascends its native stream 

 again, it is likely a fish of fifteen pounds. 



"Ephemera" says in his "Book of the Salmon:" "A Salmon 

 weighing, when caught in its descent to the sea, ten pounds, 

 has been taken on its return, after a sojourn of thirty-eight 

 days, on its salt-water feeding-grounds, and when captured it 

 weighed twenty-one and a quarter pounds." This is an 

 instance of wonderfully rapid growth, still it is difficult to 

 estimate from it, the general increase in size. The same autho] 

 remarks truly, that some Salmon, from being generated by 

 large parents, have an inherent disposition to grow rapidly. 

 Certain rivers also have a larger breed of Salmon, while in 

 others they are small. Much also depends on the quantity 

 and quality of the food they may find on their feeding- 

 grounds, and the length of time they remain there. 



We have no account of Salmon having been taken in 

 American waters, as large as the recorded sizes of those 

 which have been captured in Scotland. It is probable, 

 that the North Sea and Atlantic surrounding Great Britain, 

 being warmer, and of more equable temperature than the 

 Atlantic on our north-east coast, are also more favorable 

 to that order of marine animals (as Crustacea, &c.) on which 

 Salmon feed, and as a consequence, fish that spend the 

 winter at sea there grow larger. Salmon have been taken 

 in Scotland weighing over eighty pounds. Mr. Perley, 



