• THE SALMON
The Salmon : It's Life Story. By W. J. M. Menzies. Illustrated. (Blackwood. 21s.) '
Taotrjr abide_ our questicin: : salmon is .free. Though
we May. haveassisted at his -birth (and •even Produced it, after the -indelicate fashion- lased-in hatcheries), though we may have- watched over him while, he was an aleVin,--- with the yolk Sac still unabsorbed, and:protected his childhood while he was -'a parr, not -easily. distinguishable from the sinall: ordinary trout ; still; the day was bound to come when he would-dress in blue and silvei (looking now like a 'small fresh run sea-trout) and be-off with him to. the ocean out of our ken, FO,'-despite Mr. Menzies' itnitiense pains and erudition, there are huge gaps is this-life Story?. Sabiaon -go to the sea; but where they go in _
it can only be'. conjectured : in spite of all the nets and lines
that are at work-;only abOut a score of them have been taken at any distance from the-land ; and of these, half were,got by a trawler in one haul, butthey Were in the belly of it: twenty- five-foot shark 1 = Their main life is in remote and- unfished water. - Near 'the coast they are caught in thousands; but only when returning "to an area within man's jurisdiction, where nets and other attractions are ready for thein. Some- times theie sea-caught fish have half-digested food in their stomachs : more often they have already begun the long fast which ii--;their -portion in freSh water during the period of reproduction OM recovery.
It is almost pathetic to read of the trouble which has been taken to track their movements in the unknoWn,bycapturing fish to mark them, and see where they are next reportedi-At But Mr. ' Menzies ignores one fact. The whole course of salmon 'fishing In Ireland was altered by the introduction, a little over tfventy yeifis ago, of drift-net, fishing on' the Donegal and Mayo ebast. It wasiegal, it. was very Prolitatiic to the coastwise Millers; lint it destroyed therinTrgrilSe. Apparently its effect Was not confined to Ireland, for grilse fishing dropped " catas- trophically " in Scotland at the same time. The inference is plain, that the summer run of fish reaches these islands from the north-west about the end of May.. -Another inference is that Scotland as well as Ireland has an interest in limiting this fishing if that be possible.- it --was,:W.the waysa:SeotsinaO who started it.
For the first time we are told accurately and scientifically that a grilse is a smolt which has spent one winter in the sea. The shape of the fish is still somewhat different, the tail being more forked than in the mature salmon. We can know, apparently with certainty, by inspection of the scales, how old a fish is ; for the rings of growth are there, as in a tree ; and they show alternating periods of rapid expansion when food is plentiful and of arrest when it is scarce. Thus, Mr. Menzies can affirm from inspection of a scale that the female fish which owned it, lived ten years, went to sea as a three- year-old smolt, stayed three years at sea before first returning to the river, and spawned twice at two year intervals. Fish that stay long before returning to fresh water are the big fish : the biggest of all, which are always cocks, show sometimes a period of over four years devoted exclusively to feeding. Re- production wears salmon out : according to Mr. Menzies only about ten per cent. of hen fish return to the river a second time, while nearly all the cocks die after spawning.
This variation of period in the movements of individual fish is a protection for the race, since, if misfortune befell the whole crop of one year's breeding fish or of smolts on their way to the sea, there would be others of the same year left in sea or river to replace them, and continuity would be main- tained. A correspondent of the Spectator wrote despairingly of late about salmon poaching on Irish spawning grounds. It was in truth very bad in the lawless years 1919-21 : so bad that experienced persons, arguing that the 1919 fog should normally go to sea as smolts in 1921 and-return as salmon in 1923, anticipated that the fishing would show the traces of destruction from 1923 on. But 1924 was an unusually good year, and 1925 above the average.. Mr. Menzies helps us to know the reason of this, as of many other puzzling phenomena.
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