28 
natural indeed. On the other hand is it not the most 
natural thing in the world, since the salmon must of 
necessity be sent up into rivers where there is no food 
for them, that they should be so constituted that they 
should neither be starved to death nor tortured by hunger 
for want of food? Let us look now at some facts 
bearing upon the question. Some years ago, a large 
salmon hatching station was built on the Clackamas 
River in Oregon, and each year a rack was constructed 
across the river to prevent the ascending salmon from 
going up the river beyond the station. 
In the year 1888 the rack was put across the river in 
March, and during the summer of that year there were, 
it is safe to say, upward of 5,000 full grown salmon 
(Oncorhynchus chouzca) in sight below the rack. The 
salmon did not begin to spawn till the middle of Sep- 
tember. The great body of these fish were there three 
months, many of them four months, and some of them 
five months. During all that summer there was not a 
moment, night or day, when there were not hundreds 
of these fish struggling to get past or through the ob- 
struction in front of them, and in all that time there 
was not visible food enough where they were in the 
river to provide them with an ounce of food a-piece 
once a week. In one place the salmon were so thick 
that a person standing on the rack could with an ordin- 
ary carriage whip reach 500 full grown salmon averag- 
ing 20 lbs. a-piece in weight, and all of them actively 
struggling all the time to hold their places against the 
current. Nofood whatever was there. Noappreciable 
amount of food could have come down through the rack 
to them. No food could they possibly have had except 
such microscopic nutriment as may have existéd in the 
water, and there must have been only infinitesimally 
small rations of this, when divided up among so many 
thousand pounds of fish. The only conclusion left is that 
they must have lived several months practically without 
eating. There is no question whatever about these facts. 
