172 
SALMON. 
young; and in obtaining these the dangers incurred, and the 
difficulties to be surmounted, are lightly regarded, so that the 
length of the journey, which may extend to several hundreds 
of miles, seems only an addition to the pleasures of the 
adventure. The difficulties that are met with are produced by 
obstacles which sometimes are natural, perhaps in the shape 
of cascade that may be fonned of a rush of water from the 
almost perpendicular height of a dozen feet or more; and 
strenuous are the efforts which the Salmon is seen to put 
forth, to make good its way upward from the deepened pool 
below. 
Dr. Fleming says, in his evidence before a Committee of the 
House of Commons, that he has seen them leap up over a fall 
of thirty feet; but the spring out of the water itself seldom 
exceeded eight or ten feet; which must be considered enormous 
when we consider the impulse necessai’y to effect it in a fish 
of many pounds in weight; and he has also seen them leap 
over a dry rock so as to drop into the water behind it. W^e 
believe that sometimes a leap from below into the torrent as it 
falls will still enable the fish to surmount the difficulty; but 
more frequently this is without success, and the struggling 
creature is carried back again, if not, indeed, intercepted by a 
contrivance, referred to by Linnteus, of placing a basket in a 
situation to receive it, when hurried backward after an ineffectual 
struggle. It appears however that this failure of success is not 
always a proof of weakness; but it may be caused by the 
oblique direction in which the fish has fallen on the descending 
torrent, so that its side or shoulder became exposed to the force 
of the stream, which then it was not able to resist. The tail 
is the important organ with which these efforts are made, and 
when we examine its intimate structure we cannot fail to be 
impressed with tlie belief that this organ was especially formed 
for the purpose to which we find it thus applied; for in the 
generality of osseous fishes, if not in all besides this, the broader 
plates of bone to which the rays of the tail fin are attached, 
are placed opposite the termination of the vertebral column or 
backbone; but in the Salmon family this is not the case. On 
the contrary, the line of the joints of the vertebrse is lengthened 
out so as to be extended upward; by which means these caudal 
plates of bone are arranged and fastened along the lower border 
