86 THE SALMON. 



ments have done anytKing to clear up. What are those 

 clean salmon that run up the rivers in late winter or early 

 spring? — where have they been in the preceding months? 

 — what are they wanting now ? They cannot be wanting 

 to spawn, for there is no spawning for at least six months 

 to come. They cannot have spawned early in the pre- 

 ceding or rather present spawning season, — gone down, 

 recovered, and returned ; for numerous experiments 

 show that the shortest period of return is about three 

 months, and it is only about three months since the 

 earliest fish had begun to spawn in the river which 

 these are now ascending. They must have passed the 

 autumn or earlier winter in the sea. Then they must 

 have passed the winter without breeding, and there ^we 

 have the discouraging fact or hypothesis that the salmon 

 is a fish which does not breed every year,' — a hypothesis 

 which wiU have the less chance of acceptance just at 

 present, when it appears, or is supposed to have been 

 discovered, that the herring — a fish resembling the 

 salmon a;t least in the important respect of being mi- 

 gratory — breeds twice in each year, or, at all events, 

 breeds at two widely different seasons of the year. 



It will be understood that all or almost all that has 

 been said here has reference only to the Salmo sahr, 

 or true salmon. Beyond that, in the questions about 

 " fish of the salmon kind" — Salmo eriox, Salmo trutta, 

 Salmo alhus, etc. etc. — lies a vast field, almost pathless, 

 and thickly covered with an underwood of doubt and 

 confusion. There are, perhaps, half a dozen species or 

 varieties, all of more or less different habits, and almost 



