OUE INLAND FISHEEIES. 27 



enemies.^ When it is hatched, on emerging from 

 the gravel, possibly before it can find shelter under 

 a stone, it lies in a helpless state, hampered by 

 the large umbilical protuberance, and it suffers 

 again from foes of all kinds to the full as much 

 as in its egg state, and from this time until it 

 becomes a smolt it is alternately the prey of the 

 trouts and of its owb species ; for the salmon when 

 in the kelt state, being so ravenous, devours its own 

 offspring with avidity, while gulls and many other 

 birds of predaceous habit hover over the shoals when 

 on the shallow fords, and seize upon the young fish 

 by hundreds; and even the angler, foul shame to 

 him ! scruples not to take them daily by the basket- 

 ful, while whole bushels of them at a time are often 

 taken by means of baskets and nets in the small 

 mill-streams, and they are even used in others to 

 feed pigs with, so that not one egg in a thousand 

 ever produces a full-grown salmon. "When it reaches 

 the sea, the fish has a fresh series of perils to endure. 

 Here fish of aU kinds hunt and destroy it, and even 



1 No doubt many of these birds also feed on the larrse of insects 

 and predaceous water-beetles, which would, perhaps, do even more 

 damage among the spawn beds, so that the toll they take is unim- 

 portant compared with the good they do. Still, that they do all 

 more or less devour spawn when they can get it, I have very little 

 doubt. 



