12 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



' Eastern Daily Press,' referred to reports reaching him from 

 time to time of Salmon or Salmon-Trout being caught in the 

 river (Yare) — July, August, and September (1913). Hewett, the 

 Preservation Society's watchman (he stated), had found no fewer 

 than seven dead and decomposing fish at various times floating 

 in the river between Surlingham and Cantley. They were 

 described as fish weighing between 12 lb. and 20 lb., suggesting 

 they must be Salmon. Mr. Hotblack wrote me for particulars 

 of three Salmon-Trout captured at Oulton, and agreed with me 

 that such Trout as I had observed "jumping" may have done 

 so through irritation by the dirty (sewage-tainted) water. His 

 contention was that the Trout caught so commonly along shore, 

 all down the Norfolk Coast, were " tiding to find a freshwater 

 stream to run up, and that they constantly enter our rivers 

 trying to find a spawning-ground, which, as they are unable to 

 get past the mills, they cannot do." I did not come to the same 

 conclusion, seeing that they would have to travel a great many 

 miles up any of the Norfolk rivers before finding a bottom and 

 other conditions suitable for their purpose. Undoubtedly such 

 Salmon and Salmon-Trout as have been met with well up the 

 Yare and Waveney travelled up from Yarmouth and through 

 Breydon, and not through Oulton Lock from Lowestoft Harbour. 

 It is strange that the Salmon referred to above had not been 

 observed before they were found putrefying . Had they really 

 come upstream, or had they been cast overboard by a 

 fishmonger ? 



Some very heavy catches of Mackerel were made by local 

 drifters fishing with Mackerel-nets in November. On Sunday 

 afternoon, November 23rd, a boat ran in with fish packed and 

 piled in every possible locker and corner ; the decks were thick 

 with them, and the nets lay heaped — fish enveloped in the folds 

 in hundreds — on decks and hatchways. They were still busy 

 well into the night " scudding " (shaking out) the nets and 

 pulling the larger fishes from the meshes, and piling them on 

 the wharf in a huge heap 2 ft. deep, in an area surrounded by a 

 flanking of "swills" (fish-baskets). Nearly seven lasts (70,000) 

 of exceedingly fine Mackerel, many of them measuring 17 in. in 

 length, were the result of the "strike"; but so many had 

 " struck" that the nets "grounded " with the weight — i.e. sank 



