SOME PROBLEMS OF SALMON.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] Sin,—With reference to the article in your paper of March 11th on " Some Problems of Salmon," would you allow me to furnish - one other problem P When I was a boy of some ten or eleven years of age I and another boy were walking by the side of a 'small burn, called " Howick Burn," in Northumberland, when, to our astonishment, we saw a large salmon in a small pool of the burn. We soon had our shoes and stockings off, and, -after a struggle, caught the fish. As might be expected, we neither of -us knew anything about a salmon except that it was good to eat, and so marched of to the Rectory in great triumph with our prize. It is not necessary or expedient at this time, after so many years, to record what the Rector — who was a sportsman said to us, but what he ordered us to do was to bury the wretched salmon immediately. It was, of course, an unmistakable " kelt." Now the burn in which 'we captured this fish is a very small one, and where it runs into the sea it—under normal conditions— divides into several email tricklets over the sand and shingle, not one of them deep enough to cover a trout. And now I come to the " Problem." Why did this fish wriggle itself over the sand and shingle, and how did it know that it would find even a small brook as a reward for so doing? It was a big enough fish and of sufficient experience to know that the Tweed, and the Wansbeck, and the Pont, and the Tyne, and the Wear were all open to it and easily accessible, and most of them (the Tweed and Tyne and Wear certainly) good for spawning, and yet it preferred this insignificant burn.
Previous page
