NOTES AND QUERIES. ; 71 
eager to ascend, are some of the same that will reward the angler in the 
cold days of February next, for in that case the spawning, the return to 
the sea, the improved condition, and subsequent ascent up the river, take 
but a comparatively short time. If, as is generally supposed, the fish 
eat nothing whilst in fresh water—nothing being found in the stomachs 
of those which are caught—their voracity on their return to the sea 
must be very great, and consequently their condition may be rapidly 
improved. It is well known that the longer a salmon stays in fresh 
water the weaker it gets, and possibly the salt water recruits its strength 
in a much more rapid ratio than the weakness assails it, yet the mere 
act of spawning must be a considerable item in the weakening process 
in the constitution of some of the poor emaciated individuals as they go 
back to the sea; and one would think its reparation would take more 
than a few weeks to accomplish. That the now spawning fishes, many of 
them, go back to the sea and return again into the fresh water plump and 
bright in the early spring, is an opinion shared by not a few who have an 
interest in the matter. It is a remarkable fact that, although the Avon 
and Stour empty themselves by one mouth into. the sea, yet the Salmon, 
till within the last few years, almost shunned the Dorset stream for that of 
Hants, and, although at the present time the great majority of fish ascend 
the Avon, yet the numbers found in the Stour are annually increasing ; 
but whether this arises from more anglers and a stricter investigation 
of the latter river I cannot say—G. B. Corpin (Ringwood, Hants). 
Food of the Cod.—Referring to my previous remarks on this subject 
(p. 34) I may add that I have to-day (Jan. 19th) taken from the stomach of 
a Common Cod a very large specimen of Scyllarus arctus, and a small 
Velvet Swimming Crab (Portunus puber). The Cod in question was caught 
in the Bay here. The measurement of the specimen of Scyllarus arctus 
were :—Over all, five in. six-sixteenths ; across the carapace, one in. six- 
sixteenths; length of exterior antenne (included in “ over all”), fourteen- 
sixteenths in.; breadth of each of them, eleven-sixteenths in. — Tuos. 
Cornisu (Penzance). 
Flight of the Flying Fish.—In ‘ The Zoologist ’ for 1880 (pp. 471-481) 
appeared an article on this subject by C. O. Whitman, and in the succeeding 
volume for 1881 notes by Capt. Hadfield (p. 68), Mr. D’Urban (p. 146), 
and Mr. Pascoe (p. 147), all contributing information from personal obser- 
vation. Ina recent letter to ‘Nature’ (1st January, 1885) Prof. Mébius 
writes as follows :—* Flying Fish are incapable of flying, for the simple 
reason that the muscles of their pectoral fins are not large enough to bear 
the weight of their body aloft in the air. The pectoral muscles of birds 
depressing their wings weigh, on an average, one-sixth of the total weight 
of the body, the pectoral muscles of bats one-thirteenth, the muscles of the 
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