126 The American Salmon-fisherman. 



when they, their daily task completed, cast their baited 

 hooks into the yellow waters of the Xile. 



Whether it be due to the '' survival of the fittest," or 

 whether fish can and do profit by the lessons of experi- 

 ence, no one who has cast his fly over the trout of the 

 wilderness, and of much-fished streams within the confines 

 of civilization, can have failed to notice the marked differ- 

 ence in their susceptibility to temptation. The one will 

 take anything that has motion, though thrown to it as 

 one would throw a bone to a dog. The other requires 

 just such a thing to be tendered in just such a way, or, 

 no matter how abundant, they will laugh the angler and 

 his wiles to scorn. 



It cannot be because the ordinary perils of life, man 

 excepted, are less in the wilderness that their temerity is 

 less, since natural enemies are there more abundant. 

 Man and his works, or conditions arising therefrom, 

 must be the cause. 



However this may be, whether it be due to greater 

 natural courage in the salmon, or whether it be due to 

 the fact that by its long sojourn in the sea it is cut ofE 

 from the school of experience, it seems certain that sal- 

 mon regard the angler and his allurements with far less 

 distrust, and that they may be taken with a considerably 

 lower display of skill, than the trout of our much-fished 

 streams. 



The weight of authority would compel the belief that 

 salmon eat nothing after they enter fresh water, were it 

 not that they are taken ^-ith shrimp, minnow, and worm- 

 bait in some rivers where that style of fishing is in vogue. 

 Overawed by the first consideration, and ignorant of, or 

 ignoring the other, many have puzzled their own heads 



