858 
SCANDINAVIAN FISHES. 
leeches, mollusks, small fishes, and frogs. But as soon 
as it has attained a weight of 1 — V/ 2 kilo., it rivals 
in voracity all other predatory fishes of the same size, 
being hardly surpassed by the Pike, and boldly attacks 
any living thing which it believes it can overcome, 
not excepting its own progeny, though the peaceful 
Bleaks and Gwyniads are perhaps its most frequent 
victims. Even in later life, however, its diet is com- 
posed mainly of all insects that live in the water in a 
larval or a perfect state, and small crustaceans. Its 
partiality to the former is so great that it seems to 
suffer from want of food, if other insectivorous fishes 
— even those which it readily preys upon itself — 
multiply too extensively in the same waters.” When 
the lemmings migrate from the mountain tracts of 
Lappmark, and endeavour, as they often do, to swim 
the rivers in their path, they are devoured in numbers 
by the large Trout ( Gralaxar ). 
Such is the life led by the true fresh-water Sal- 
mons from the extreme north of Europe to the south- 
ernmost parts of Spain, in Algiers, Asia Minor, and 
probably, to the north of the Hindu Kush. In those 
southern regions they are reminiscences of the time 
when their present abodes were connected with seas 
cold enough for the Salmon to thrive and rove about 
in their waters. Their occurrence in Africa is no so- 
litary phenomenon; the range of the Sticklebacks shows 
the same memories of primeval times. Since the Me- 
diterranean has become too warm and perhaps too salt 
for the Salmons, they have succeeded in adapting them- 
selves to their environments in some scattered rivers 
and lakes, and in there maintaining their existence at 
the Forell stage. In Scandinavia these are the fishes 
that ascend to the greatest, heights among the moun- 
tains, as high as a, fish can well advance in the moun- 
tain lakes and brooks. Clear and oxygenated waters, 
freshened by rushing falls, are the favourite haunts of 
the River Trout. On the plains and to sluggish, clayey 
rivers it is a stranger. In Switzerland, according to 
Patio", it ascends to a height of 2,630 in. above the 
sea-level. In salt, water, on the other hand, the range 
of the Salmon is terminated to the south by Cape 
Finisterre, in about 43° N. lat., and it thus does not 
enter the Mediterranean. On the west side of the 
Atlantic its southward range extends to about 41° N. 
lat., but there its northward extension is not so great. 
It occurs, it is true, up to the middle of Labrador, 
but is probably wanting in Greenland and on the west 
coast, of North America. It has, however, been intro- 
duced, after several unsuccessful attempts, both about 
1860 and in more recent, years, into Australia * 6 and 
New Zealand, where Trout, originally hatched from 
ova of the English River Trout, are said to have 
adopted the habits and dress of the migratory Sal- 
mons 1 '. From these regions Day' 6 received, among 
other specimens, a male and a female, the former mea- 
suring 825 mm., the latter 800 nnn., whose characters 
he found most closely to resemble those of the English 
Salmo ferox. 
The Salmon spawns, like the Charr, in autumn 
and winter. As a general rule it is, no doubt, true 
that the Salmon is bound by its love of home to re- 
turn from the sea to spawn in the watercourse and 
the place where it. was itself born and bred. Herein 
it is guided by instinct so unerring that in many lo- 
calities the fishermen declare they can distinguish with- 
out. fail between Salmon belonging to different rivers, 
even if the mouths of two or more of these rivers lie 
close besides each other. Marked fish have often been 
retaken in the river where they had been marked and 
set at liberty. But exceptions also occur; according 
to I )ay c , for example, Salmon have been seen making 
their way up the Thames, a river which had long 
been deserted by the true Salmon. From the results of 
the fishery in the rivers which fall into the Gulf of 
Bothnia, it is also known that the run of the Salmon 
in these rivers — more plentiful one year in one stream, 
less plentiful in another — is greatly affected by diffe- 
rent states of wind and weather, which would probably 
exert, a less appreciable influence if the same Salmon 
always repaired to the same river. 
Early in spring, soon after the breaking up of 
the ice, the Salmon begin to appear at the mouths of 
the rivers which they are to ascend. The Salmon is 
a Fne Suisse , vol. V, p. 373. 
6 See Nicols, The Acclimatisation of the Salmonidce at the Antipodes, London 1882. 
c Day, British Salmonidce, p. 145. 
d L. c., p. 198. 
e L. c., p. 66. 
