SALMONOIDE^E. 151 



salmon, from fourteen to sixteen pounds in weight, were watched. The ova were 

 observed to be deposited near the sources of the stream on the 2nd of November, 

 and covered up with gravel in the usual way. The spawning bed was placed at 

 the foot of a pretty long and placid pool, and just at the top of a stream where the 

 water first begins to feel the effects of the approaching descent. The water was 

 about fifteen feet broad, with a depth of six inches. The breadth of the bed seemed 

 to be about eight feet, and its length three or four, the whole having rather an oval 

 form. It had the appearance of washed gravel, in consequence of the whole mass 

 having been turned over by the salmon during the process of depositing the ova. 

 On the 25th of February, or one hundred and sixteen days afterwards, hundreds 

 of ova were turned up with the spade from the depth of from nine to twelve inches 

 below the surface of the gravel. They were clear, transparent, and seemingly 

 unchanged. On the 23rd of March the ova were found to be changing ; the outer 

 shell cast ; the fry lying imbedded in the gravel as fishes, being twenty weeks from 

 the period of their deposition. By the 1st of April most of the fry had quitted the 

 bed, by ascending through the gravel, and on the 19th of that month many 

 were taken eight or even nine inches long, in excellent condition. Fry of the 

 same size, but probably of a later deposit, were abundant in the same streams on 

 the 5th of May. In a former year the roe was found unchanged on the 10th of 

 April, but on the 17th the excluded fry were imbedded in the gravel, and on the 

 22nd smoults were taken about the size of the little finger. The depth at which 

 the ova are deposited varies, being sometimes about two feet below the surface of 

 the bed. The food of the fry is exactly the same with that of the trout found in 

 the rivers at the same period ; viz., small insects, larvse of flies, beetles, and cod- 

 bait, with which the gravel of the stream abounds in an incredible degree. In the 

 gravel-bed the ova of salmon and trout lie safe from every living enemy, and in the 

 midst of profusion of food, whose habitat is the same as their own ; and whose 

 progress of incubation and subsequent rise through the gravel is quite similar. The 

 great variety and quantity of these insects, together with the depth of their situa- 

 tion (for the spade which took up the ova was also full of them), was truly sur- 

 prising. It is probable that as these larvee of insects, for such they mostly are, 

 rise above the gravel to assume new forms, they offer ready food for the trout and 

 salmon fry of all sizes which may be in the river ; but I do not suppose that these 

 fishes dig under the gravel in search of food at any time *. 



* No trout affords the young angler more certain amusement than the salmon fry. These unsuspicious smouis have 

 keen appetites and rise with avidity at the artificial fly, however rudely made, provided it be small enough — but a cadis 

 worm, or a gentle impaled on a hackle, is a still more alluring bait. We have known a bare-legged truant kill thirty dozen 

 in one day with the most inartificial tackle. 



