SCIENCE SKETCHES. 
THE STORY OF A SALMON. 
N the realm of the Northwest Wind, on the 
boundary-line between the dark fir-forests and 
the sunny plains, there stands a mountain,—a 
great white cone two miles and a half in perpen- 
dicular height. On its lower mile the dense fir- 
woods cover it with never-changing green; on its 
next half-mile a lighter green of grass and bushes 
gives place in winter to white; and on its upper- 
most mile the snows of the great ice age still 
linger in unspotted purity. The people of Wash- 
ington Territory say that their mountain is the 
great “King-pin of the Universe,” which shows 
that even in its own country Mount Tacoma is 
not without honor. 
Flowing down from the southwest slope of 
Mount Tacoma is a cold, clear river, fed by the 
melting snows of the mountain. Madly it hastens 
down over white cascades and beds of shining 
sands, through birch-woods and belts of dark firs, 
to mingle its waters at last with those of the great 
Columbia. This river is the Cowlitz; and on its 
bottom, not many years ago, there lay half buried 
