24 THE LIFE OF THE SALMON 
A certain number of stray specimens have from 
time to time been captured, which have given us 
glimpses of the salmon’s development in this stage. 
When trawling with a shrimp net for experimental 
purposes in May 1901, two miles off Blackpool, 2.e., 
about twenty miles from the mouth of the Ribble, 
Mr. Archer was fortunate enough to catch a 
young salmonid 7 inches in length, which Professor 
Herdman and Dr. Noél Paton considered to be a 
salmon smolt. Professor Herdman found the stomach 
and intestines fully charged with nourishment. The 
remains of two young sprats were in the stomach, and 
the scales of other sprats or of young herring could be 
distinguished in the contentsof the intestines, together 
with the remains of small crustaceans (copepods), 
which, however, may have been ingested from the 
swallowed fish, since sprats and herring feed largely 
on copepods. This smolt had apparently got clear 
away from the mouth of any river, and had com- 
menced to absorb the particular kind of nourishment 
which we know the adult salmon fattens upon. 
Herr Dahl reports * receiving from mackerel fishers 
who had been working off the coast of Norway three 
young salmon measuring respectively 17°5, 390, and 
43:0 cm. (6%, 153, and 17 inches); and by fishing 
with fixed engines of small mesh he himself secured at 
the island of Garten, in the Trondhjem Fjord, a few 
small salmon measuring from 45 to 70 em. (172 to 
274 inches). The same writer, who has made a most 
exhaustive search in European museums for speci- 
mens of young salmon, reports that in Bergen 
* “(Brret og Unglaks.” Christiania, 1902. 
