NOTES ON SALMON-FISHING. 
51 
satisfy hundreds of such appetites ? If they required 
to be so satisfied, a single week’s ravages would clear 
out every living thing in the water. Aquila non 
capit muscas , nor does a salmon use his armed vomer 
or double rows of back-set teeth to catch animalcule 
and small crustaceans. 
No; every trout, smolt, or eel, every duck, moor¬ 
hen, and water-rat, would speedily be swept up—in 
a week small boys would hardly be safe. Consider also 
that a salmon loses condition, strength, and fighting- 
power from the moment he enters fresh water, while his 
stomach and digestive organs shrivel away with disuse. 
Why salmon take a fly, or what they mistake it for, 
are perennial problems. But all that is immaterial 
to our present point. Certainly there is no form of 
life in fresh water that in any degree resembles a 
“ salmon fly,” and the assumption therefore is not 
unreasonable that the fish take the fly or other lure 
for some object on which they have been accustomed 
to prey while in salt water. ^ 
The tinsel and gaudy feathers, it may be, recall 
pleasant memories of the week or month before, and 
Salmo salar, with reawakened rapacity, but without 
pausing to consider the anomaly of thus finding a prawn 
inland, or a starfish stemming a rapid, dashes at the 
intruder—and gets the hook. - 
Whether this be a solution of the problem or other¬ 
wise, and, if not, what the true answer may be, is, as 
already stated, immaterial to the angler. 
* No doubt a salmou fly may at times resemble a small fish. 
Trout frequently seize a large fly in a big water, or when out of 
condition. Unquestionably they mistake it for small fish. 
