12 
MUSEUM BULLETIN NO. 13. 
the birds go to the nets and help themselves to the contents. 
The few herring they take are on the whole only a bagatelle; 
but when half a dozen small fish is all that can be expected from a 
net to serve for a day’s fishing, and half or more are taken by 
cormorants, the fishermen can hardly be criticized for giving vent 
to some evidences of discontent at the loss of a day’s work and 
profit. However, though the fishermen do look upon the cor- 
morants as one of their natural enemies, they do not seem to be 
bitter against them ; not nearly as much so as the salmon an- 
glers, who only have a sporting interest in their fish and are not 
dependent upon them for a livelihood. The best protection for 
the herring in the nets against the cormorants appears to be to 
lift the nets early in the morning before the cormorants commence 
to fish. Recourse may be had to frozen bait, caught when her- 
ring are plenty and preserved for times of scarcity. This has 
been tried and, according to reliable reports, with good success 
by those who gave it a fair trial ; but the majority of the fishermen 
are too conservative to adopt new methods and the freezing 
apparatus was a financial failure and was discarded. 
The life history of the Atlantic salmon seems to be about 
as follows. The eggs are laid in the sand at the headwaters of 
the streams in the autumn, being deposited by the female and 
fertilized by the male who then covers them with sand. In the 
spring they hatch and the young, still with a large sac of egg 
yolk attached, seek safety in the crevices of the rocks until the 
sac is absorbed, when they begin feeding and gradually spread down 
stream. Here they remain two years growing into fingerlings 
or, as they are technically called, parr. At this stage, when 
they are about 4 inches long, they proceed to deep water as 
smolts. Authorities differ as to the time spent at sea in this 
stage, and some doubt is expressed as to whether the typical 
smolt characteristics are developed before or after entering salt 
water. When they again ascend the streams they are grilse, 
with a weight of from 2 to 5 pounds. They descend to the sea 
at the end of the season to come back the following year fully 
developed, 20 to 40 pound breeding salmon. The adult salmon 
does not feed in fresh water until after the eggs are deposited 
and fertilized. The trip is long and arduous and when the 
