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AMERICAN FISHES. 
were known to the English, who after the conquest became their keepers. 
In a similar way, the word Salmon, the name of the adult fish ready for 
the banquet, was brought in by the Norman invaders. The Magna Charta 
recognized property rights in Salmon-fisheries, and protective laws have 
been enforced in England for at least six centuries. 
How did the Salmon get its name? Fuller in his “Worthies,” says, 
“ from its strange leaping (or flying rather) so that some will have theirs 
termed sahnones a saliendo , ” and later etymologists have found no better 
theory. Skeat calls attention to the fact that the introduction of the l is 
due to our knowledge of the Latin form, since we do not pronounce it. 
The Middle English name was Saumoun , very close to the Old French 
Saumon. Sain is the German version and one of the tributaries of the 
Moselle is called the River Salm. 
There are other names by the score used in Europe, but scarcely known 
in this country, where Salmon and Grilse are the only titles in common 
use. A Grilse is a Salmon of less than five pounds weight on its first 
return from the sea. 
“Grilse” is believed by Houghton to be a corruption of the Swedish 
graelax or “gray lax,” i. e. a gray salmon. 
The Salmon inhabits the North Atlantic and its tributary waters. No 
one knows how far beyond the arctic circle it ranges, though its occurrence 
in northern Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland, and middle Labrador is 
well established. It occurs in all parts of northwestern Europe, and is 
especially abundant in the British Islands, and is more or less plenty in 
France, Belgium, Holland and Prussia, entering the Baltic,—according to 
some authorities, the White Sea,—and ascending the Rhine as far as Basle. 
The southern limit of range is in Galicia, the most northern province of 
Spain, in latitude 43 0 . “ There is a river in Macedon',” says Fluellen, in 
King Henry the Fifth, “and there is also a river in Monmouth ; it is 
called Wye at Monmouth ; but it is out of my brains what is the name of 
the other; but ’t is all one, ’t is alike as my fingers is to my fingers, and 
there is salmons in both.” Fluellen was wrong, and so was Shakespeare, 
if he shared the belief of his hero, for there are no Salmon in any portion 
of the Mediterranean basin. 
On this side of the Atlantic the species ranges more to the southward. 
The Connecticut River once teemed with them, and stragglers have been 
captured in the Housatonic and the Hudson. The southern limit is 
