132 THE NEW ART OF BEEEDING TISH. 



The use of this excrescence is not known. Sahnon 

 in suroioimting weirs and waterfalls jump straight 

 upwards— not perpendicularly, but rising gradually 

 as a man taking a running leap over a hurdle, hedge, 

 or gate. On the moot point of salmon leaping, I say, 

 in a Handbook of Angling, "Natural historians used 

 to gravely tell us that salmon, in order to jump high, 

 were in the habit of placing their tails in their 

 mouths, and then bending themselves like a bow, 

 bound out of the water to a considerable distance, 

 from twelve to twenty feet." The late Mr. Scrope 

 (^Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing), correctly 

 culates that six feet in height is more than the aver- 

 age spring of salmon, though he conceives that very 

 large fish, in deep water, could leap mibch (which I 

 doubt) higher. He says, "Large fish can spring 

 much higher than small ones ; but their powers are 

 limited or augmented according to the depth of wa- 

 ter they spring from : in shallow water they have 

 little power of ascension ; in deep they have the 

 most considerable. They rise very rapidly from the 

 very bottom to the surface of the water by means of 

 rowing and sculling, as it were,, with their fins and 

 tail ; and this powerful impetus bears them upwards 

 in the air, on the same principle that a few tugs of 

 the oar make a boat shoot onwards after one has 

 ceased to row." The ascending motion is caused by 

 the salmon striking the water downwards with its 

 pectoral, ventral, and dorsal fins, aided by bodily 

 muscular action. 



