218 THE INHABITANTS OF THE SEA. 



Every spring or summer the salmon leave the ocean to de- 

 posit their spawn in the sweet waters, often at a distance of many 

 hundred miles in the interior of the Continent, so that the same 

 fish which during part of the year may be breasting the waves 

 of the North Sea, may at another be forcing the current of an 

 Alpine stream. Their onward progress is not easily stopped : 

 they shoot up rapids with the velocity of arrows, and make 

 wonderful efforts to surmount cascades or weirs by leaping, 

 frequently clearing an elevation of eight or ten feet. These 

 surprising bounds appear to be accomplished by a sudden jerk, 

 which is given to its body by the animal from a bent into a 

 straight position. If they fail in their attempt, and fall back 

 into the stream, it is only to rest a short time, and thus recruit 

 their strength for a new effort. The fall of Kilmaroc, on the 

 Beauly, in Inverness-shire, is one of the spots where the leaping 

 feats of the salmon can best be witnessed. " The pool below that 

 fall," says Mr. Mudie, in the British Naturalist, " is very large, 

 and as it is the head of the run in one of the finest salmon 

 rivers in the north, and only a few miles distant from the sea, 

 it is literally thronged with salmon, which are continually 

 attempting to pass the fall, but without success, as the limit of 

 their perpendicular spring does not appear to exceed twelve or 

 fourteen feet ; at least, if they leap higher than that, they are 

 aimless and exhausted, and the force of the current dashes them 

 down again before they have recovered their energy. They often 

 kill themselves by the violence of their exertions to ascend, and 

 sometimes they fall upon the rocks and are captured. It is 

 indeed said that one of the wonders which the Frasers of Lovat, ' 

 who are lords of the manor, used to show their guests was a 

 voluntarily cooked salmon at the falls of Kilmaroc. For 

 this purpose a kettle was placed upon the flat rock on the south 

 side of the fall, close by the edge of the water and kept full and 

 boiling. There is a considerable extent of the rock where tents 

 were erected, and the whole was under a canopy of overshadowing 

 trees. There the company are said to have waited until a 

 salmon fell into the kettle, and was boiled in their presence. 

 We have seen as many as eighty taken in a pool lower down 

 the river at one haul of the seine, and one of the number 

 weighed more than sixty pounds." 



As the salmon laboriously ascend the rivers, it may easily be 



