The Way of a Salmon— The Norwegians of late have
been adding new facts to our knowledge of the way of a fish in the sea. We all know that parts of a salmon's life, though much is still mysterious, can be read from the characters on the scales. The key to the interpretation is the discovery, made long ago, that the fish, scales and all, grows quickly in the sea and slowly in the river. The scales show rings very much as a tree shows rings ; and a
good tree-man can tell from a section of the trunk not only how long the tree has lived, but also which years were favourable to growth and which were not. He may also be able to tell which side of the bit of trunk looked south and which north. A salmon's scales are not less legible, and as a salmon is a short- lived animal that attains to great size within his eight years or so of life, the whole life history may be roughly traced. They begin life, of course, in the river, stay there (in particular cases) two years, and then may spend two years in the sea, before returning to the fresh water. It seems, according to a contributor, writing in an admirable number of Mr. Richard Morse's paper, the Countryside, that they spawn more rarely than was once thought.
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