FISHES. 381 
the sweetness of its flesh. Salmon are found of a great 
weight, and sometimes measure five feet at least in 
length. The colour is beautiful, a dark blue dotted with 
black spots on the back, decreasing to silvery white on 
the sides, and white with a little shade of pink below. 
The fins are comparatively small. These fish, though 
they live principally in the sea, come up the rivers at the 
spawning season, to a considerable distance inland, and 
there the female deposits her eggs. Soon after, both she 
and the male take an excursion to the vast regions of the 
sea, and do not visit any of the land streams again till 
the next year, when they return for the same purpose. 
They are so powerfully impelled by this natural impulse, 
that, if they are stopped when swimming up a river by a 
fall of water, they spring up with such a force through the 
descending torrent, that they stem it till they reach the 
higher bed of the stream ; and on this account small cas- 
cades on the Tweed and other rivers are often called 
Salmon-leaps. The Salmon is in a great measure confined 
to the northern seas, being unknown in the Mediter- 
ranean, and in the waters of other warm climates. The 
flesh is red when raw, redder when salted, and a little 
paler when boiled ; it is an agreeable food, fat, tender, 
and sweet, and excels in richness all other sea-h'sh : how- 
ever, it does not agree with all stomachs, and is chiefly 
hurtful when eaten by sick persons. The Salmon feeds 
on minnows and other small fish. 
In the river Tweed, about the month of July, the cap- 
ture of Salmon is astonishing : often a boat-load, and 
sometimes nearly two, may be taken at a tide ; and in 
one instance more than seven hundred fish were caught 
at a single haul of the net. From fifty to a hundred at a 
haul are very common. Some of these are sent to Lon- 
don by the steam-boats ; but part of these are slightly 
salted and dried like the herrings, in which state they are 
called kipper. What is called pickled Salmon is made by 
