76 FISHES OF PENNSYLVANIA. 

mon thirty-two inches long was captured in the Bushkill in Groetzinger’s 
mill race. This was a female. Several other adults, six or eight in all, 
were taken in the fall of 1877. A few individuals have been caught in 
the Susquehanna; one weighing nineteen pounds was taken, May 11, 
1879, near Havre de Grace. Of the land-locked variety a small number 
were placed in Harvey’s lake, Luzerne county, and in Rutter’s pond ad- 
joining, as early as 1876. In 1891 young salmon were abundant in the 
upper Delaware. 
Size.—The usual weight of the Atlantic salmon ranges from fifteen to 
forty pounds, but individuals weighing sixty pounds have been recorded. 
Habits and Reproduction.—The growth of the salmon is accomplished 
chiefly in the ocean. Asa rule the adults enter the rivers on a rising 
temperature when ready to deposit their eggs; the spawning season oc- 
curring on the falling temperature in water not warmer than fifty de- 
grees. The time of entering the rivers is April in the Delaware and 
Hudson, a little later in the Connecticut, still later in the Merrimac, and 
in the Penobscot they come most abundantly in June and July; in the 
Miramichi from the middle of June to October. The salmon is not 
much affected by changes in temperature of the water, enduring a range 
of fully forty-five degrees. The eggs are deposited in shoal water on 
sandy or gravelly bottom, the parent fish making deep depressions by 
means of their noses or by flopping motions of the tail. The period of 
egg depositing lasts from five to twelve days. Thespawning season be- 
gins about the middle of October and may run into December. In some 
European rivers the season continues until February. The eggs are 
about one-fourth of an inch in diameter, and the female is estimated to 
have about one thousand for each pound of her weight. In the Penob- 
scot, according to the observations of Mr. Atkins, an eight-pound fe- 
male yields from 5,000 to 6,000 eggs, and a female of forty pounds about 
15,000 eggs. The hatching period ranges from one hundred and forty 
to two hundred days or more, depending on the temperature. A newly- 
hatched salmon is about three-fourths of an inch long, and the yolksack 
is not absorbed until from a month to six weeks. It then begins to feed 
upon small organisms in the water. At the age of two months it meas- 
ures one and a-half inches and begins to show cross bars and red spots, 
gradually coming into the parr stage which may last until the second or 
third spring of its life, when it becomes bright silvery in color and is 
known asasmolt. The smolt then goes into the ocean, from which it 
returns at the end of from four to twenty-eight months as a grilse or a 
mature salmon. In the sea the salmon feeds upon herring, capelin, sand 
launce, smelt and other small fishes, besides crustaceans; but during 
its stay in fresh water it takes no tood. 
Enemies.—Among the worst enemies of salmon eggs are trout, eels, 
suckers and frogs. Numerous species of birds destroy the fry, among 
them shelldrakes, kingfishers, gulls and terns. 
Ce a 
