Gerrixneg Reapy ror Sra. B75 
sends only half the shoal to sea at a time; the remaining 
part of the shoal will follow next year, or perhaps a few will 
remain three summers in the river before resorting to marine 
A SMoLT FrrtTeeN Montus Ovp. 
feeding-grounds. In the mean time we lose sight of the first 
detachment, which falls back from pool to pool, and descends 
rapids and falls tail foremost until it arrives in the estuary, 
where it faces to the right about and prepares to protect 
itself from the monsters of the deep. For some days, and 
perhaps weeks, it dallies in the lower reaches and estuary, 
feeding on small caplin, shrimp, and the roe of coarser fish un- 
til its burnished sides form an armor to protect it against the 
briny deep. Where the marine feeding-grounds of the sal- 
mon are it is impossible to state from indubitable data, Sal- 
mon are sometimes found in soundings off the Isle of Jersey, 
several hundred miles from any salmon river, and yet in Can- 
ada the netters capture all their fishes approaching their riv- 
ers on the north shore of the St. Lawrence from the west, 
when the sea is at the east. That this genre of fishes, like all 
others habitually visiting fresh-water streams to spawn, re- 
turn and enter the rivers of their birth, is well authenticated, 
while it has been satisfactorily proven that if scared away 
from the estuary by nets or other unnatural fixtures they’ 
will enter other rivers. 
In the physical transmutations of the salmon, from the time 
it breaks the egg and hides about in erevices with a part of 
the egg attached to its abdomen, to the time when it fully 
matures into an adult salmon, there is no form it takes which 
is so graceful and beautiful as that of the grilsc, the last stage 
