THE SMOLT MIGEATION. 133 



those caught in the estuaries by means of stake or bag nets 

 being richer in quality and finer in flavour than the river fish : 

 the moment the salmon enters the fresh water it begins to 

 decrease in weight and fall from its high condition. It is a 

 curious fact, and a wise provision of nature, that the eel, which 

 is also a migratory fish, descends to spawn in the sea as the 

 salmon is ascending to the river-head for the same purpose ; 

 were the f3,ct different, and both fish to spawn in the river, the 

 roe of the salmon would be completely eaten up. In due time 

 then, we find the silver-coated host leaving the rippling cradle 

 of its birth, and adventuring on the more powerful stream, by 

 which it is borne to the seorfed estuary, or the briny ocean 

 itself. ■ And this picturesque tour is repeated year after year, 

 being apparently the grand essential of salmon life. 



It is pleasant, rod in hand, on a breezy spring day, while 

 trying to coax " the monarch of the brook " from his shelter- 

 ing pool, to watch this annual migration, and to note the 

 passage of the bright-mailed army aidown the majestic river, 

 that hurries on by busy corn-mill, and sweeps with a murmur- 

 ing sound past hoar and ruiaed towers, washing the pleasant 

 lawns of country magnates or laving the cowslips on the 



SMOLT TWO YEARS OLD. 



Half the natural size. 



village meadow, and as it rolls ceaselessly ocean-ward, giving 

 a more picturesque aspect to the quaint agricultural villages 

 and farm homesteads which it passes in its course. During 

 the whole length of its pilgrimage the army of smolts pays a 

 tribute to its enemies in gradual decimation': it is attacked at 

 every point of vantage j at one place the smolts are taken 

 prisoners by the hundred in some weU-contrived net, at another 

 picked off singly by some juvenile angler. The smolt is 

 greedily devoured by the trout, the pike, and various other 

 enemies, which lie constantly in waiting for it, sure of a rich 



