HISTORY OF THE PACIFIC SALMON. 573 



spawning. But although the upper tributaries of the Fraser River 

 are ahiiost unapproachable for some time after the spawning 

 season, on account of the numbers of dead and putrefj'ing fish 

 which they contain, I do not think it is absolutely proved that 

 all the fish do die after spawning. Later on I shall produce 

 .something approaching a proof that they do not. Most of them 

 undoubtedly do die then. Many of our Atlantic salmon are so 

 exhausted after spawning that they promptly die. Much more 

 so must that be the case with these Pacific salmon, which ascend 

 the rivers not for a few tens of miles as our fish do, but for some 

 hundreds, or even for many hundreds of miles. The probability 

 certainly is that when they go very far from the sea, none of them 

 retuni. But they do not all ascend to extreme distances ; and I 

 can see no reason why some of those which have not haxl far to 

 go, or great difiiculties to surmount on the journey, should not 

 have sufiicient strength to recover and to spawn again. I well 

 remember the manager of one of the largest canneries on the 

 Fraser saying to me that the idea that all the fish died was based 

 on the statements of Indians only ; that no one else knew any- 

 thing about it (I speak of twenty years ago), and that millions of 

 kelts might come down the middle of the Fraser with the stream, 

 and not a soul be any the wiser. To my mind the fact that no 

 kelts are ever seen does not 23i'ove their absence. No netting is 

 going on when the kelts would come down, so, as no Pacific 

 salmon can jump, and as no Pacific salmon has ever been known 

 to take a bait in fresh water, it is most improbable that they 

 would be seen. 



It was in the hope that some definite evidence might be forth- 

 coming upon this point that I first took up the study of the 

 scales of Pacific salmon. One certain spawning mark would 

 disprove the idea tliat eveiy fish dies. But even on our Atlantic 

 Coast the percentage of fish that are recaptured after having 

 spawned is very small ; and on the Pacific Coast the percentage 

 must, for the reasons mentioned, be much smaller. Supposing 

 it to be as high as one in a hundred, which it probably is not, it 

 might be necessaiy to examine the scales of some thousands of 

 fish before that one happened to be among them. I have not 

 been able to examine the scales of more than a few dozens, but I 

 think that I have been so lucky as to find a spawning mark 

 on the scales of a laige Quinnat. One of its scales is shown 

 in text-fig. 95 (p. 574), and I believe that the mark about a 

 quarter of an inch from the edge of the photograph is a spawning 

 mark. I shall have more to say about it later on when I come to 

 •deal with the Quinnat salmon in detail. 



As against the general belief that Pacific salmon never survive 

 spawning, I have heard the argument that the largest Quinnats, 

 which weigh from 50 to 100 lbs., must be very old fish and that 

 they must almost certainly have spawned. In text-fig. 96 (p. 575) 

 is shown the scale of one which weighed 62| lbs. It has certainly 

 not spawned, and it is also certainly not old. It appears to be 



