NATURAL HISTORY OF BRITISH SALMONID. 125 
This grouping commends itself not only by its simplicity 
and convenience of classification, but also by such broadly 
marked distinctions in regard to habits, localities, &c., as must 
override distinctions founded upon mere technical differences. 
Of the silver or migratory division of Sa/monida, the first 
in place, in virtue both of its pre-eminent qualities as a 
food fish and its precedence in the estimation of fishermen, 
is the 
SALMON (Saimo salar). 
Forty or fitty years ago comparatively little was known of 
the natural history of the salmon. Of theory there was a 
superabundance ; in fact it was rare to come across a salmon 
fisher, to say nothing of a salmon ‘legislator,’ who had not 
some pet hobby of his own on the subject, ready to be trotted 
out on the parliamentary or any other plain at the smallest 
provocation. 
Descending, however, from theory and speculation to 
actual knowledge, the united lore of those most interested 
in the salmon fisheries amounted to little beyond the bare 
truism that the fish ascended the rivers to spawn during the 
spring and summer—spawned—and descended again to the 
sea within the following two or three months. This, I say, was 
the state of our salmon knowledge some forty or fifty years 
ago. 
The last two decades, however, witnessed a very marked 
and important advance. 
The researches of ichthyologists and the experiments which 
have been conducted on a large scale by enterprising and 
scientific men have thrown a flood of light upon the subject, 
converting doubts into certainties, theories into practice, and 
generally advancing our knowledge to a point which has been 
productive of most important reforms in the management of 
our exhausted salmon fisheries, and in the establishment of 
new ones. 
Amongst those to whose exertions in the practical, per- 
