186 Transactions. — Zoology. 



spawn from sheer want of room. * * * At the end of the pebble stream 

 was a waterfall, beyond which no fish could by any possibility pass. 

 Having arrived at this barrier to all further progress, there they obstinately 

 remained. Weeks were spent in watching them, but I never, in a single 

 instance, saw one turn back and endeavour to seek a more congenial water- 

 course ; but, crowded from behind by fresh arrivals, they died by the score, 

 and drifting slowly along in time reached the larger stream. It was a 

 strange and novel sight to see three moving lines of fish — the dead and 

 dying in the eddies and slack water along the banks ; the living breasting 

 the current in the centre, blindly pressing on to perish like their kindred. 



" Even in streams where a successful deposition of the ova has been 

 accomplished, there never appears, as far as my observations have gone, 

 any disposition in the parent fish to return to the sea. Their instinct still 

 prompts them to keep swimming up-stream, until you often find them with 

 their noses quite worn off, their heads bruised and battered, fins and tail 

 ragged and torn, bodies emaciated, thin, and flabby ; the bright silvery tints 

 dull and leaden in hue, a livid red streak extending along each side from 

 head to tail, in which large ulcerous sores have eaten into the very vitals. 



" The Indians say all the salmon that come up to spawn die ; but if all 

 do not die, I have no hesitation in saying that very few spring salmon ever 

 reach the salt water after ascending the rivers to spawn." * 



" Having killed and eaten salmon in almost every part of the world they 

 inhabit, California included, I hope I shall not be considered presumptuous 

 in giving a tolerably decided opinion as to their relative merits, and have no 

 hesitation in saying that the best breed of salmon I have ever met with is 

 our own, and the worst the Californian. * * * But another and most 

 serious objection to their being brought over here should be considered, viz., 

 the fearful prevalence of disease among them. The mortality among 

 salmon in California is simply incredible. I have seen many thousands of 

 them dead and dying from apparently a fearful leprosy." f 



"Mr. Livingston Stone, Dep. U.S. Fish Commissioner, in charge of the 

 Government hatching establishment on the McCloud Eiver, reports offi- 

 cially that, in his opinion, all of the salmon of that river die after depositing 

 their spawn. This is possibly true, but it does not account for the fact that 

 in the spawning season the McCloud contains grilse and fish evidently of 

 three, four, and five years old, unless we are to imagine that some salmon, 

 after being hatched and going to the ocean, remain there two, three or 

 more years without returning to the parent stream for purposes of spawn- 

 ing. ■"'' * * From the letter of a fisherman, he says, — ' As to the return 



* " The Naturalist in British Columbia," by J. Keast Lord, 1866. 

 t Article in "Fishing Gazette," London, 1879, by Sir Kose Price. 



