48 ANGLING 



For the secure and effectual depositions of its spawn, 

 the salmon invariably selects pure running streams, with 

 gravelly bottoms. All slow, stagnant, sluggish, and 

 clayey bedded rivers are carefully avoided, or at most 

 very, very seldom entered. In their choice of the 

 stream the fish never make any very serious mistake, but 

 are conducted by an almost infallible instinct to a safe 

 and suitable deposit, with all the certainty and regularity 

 that experience and reason could themselves confer. 

 Salmon generally swim pretty close to the bottom of 

 the river, and pursue their onward course with rapidity 

 and decision ; and, indeed, some naturalists have affirmed 

 that they frequently run at the rate of five-and-twenty 

 miles an hour in waters where they encounter no 

 obstacles. 



When the gill, or male fish, finds a proper place, he 

 works in the ground with his nose until he has made 

 a hole or bed sufficiently large for the reception of the 

 spawn ; and when this subaqueous nuptial couch is all 

 prepared, he looks out for his mate, and they jointly 

 take possession of their temporary residence. When the 

 process is finished, they both return to their haunts in 

 the river, or dash back to the sea on the first favourable 

 opportunity. This is substantially the state of the case, 

 as far as the mere act of depositing the spawn is con- 

 cerned. It has been more minutely described by some 

 naturalists and angling writers than by others, but the 

 general result is comprised in the statement now made. 



But here a controversy starts, which has of very 

 recent years been carried on, but without the main 

 questions having been as yet brought to a satisfactory 

 and general decision. What becomes of the salmon- 

 fry when hatched into life ? What shape, colour, size, 

 do they assume? How do they regulate their move- 

 ments? These are still, in some measure, debatable 

 and unsettled questions. The old opinions used to be 

 these : — After the roe had been deposited by the parent 

 fish a sufficient length of time in the bottom they had 

 channelled out, it became quickened into life by some 

 hidden and inscrutable process, and became salmon-fry, 



