to insure success, as may be seen by the following anecdote :

When the fish has taken the fly, to pull a hard strain on the line would snap the tackle to pieces, even were it made of wire; ease your hand, and let him rise; take leisure, give him line, but do not slack too fast, and in half-an-hour thou layest him on the bank. Sir Walter Scott.

Salmon Fishing with Spear.-The salmon is caught with a spear, which they dart at him as he swims on the surface of the water. It is customary also to catch him with a candle and lantern, or wisp of straw set on fire; for the fish naturally following the light, are struck with the spear, or taken in a net spread for that purpose, and lifted with a sudden jerk from the bottom. Some few years ago, there were taken in the Tweed seven hundred fish at one hawl, but from fifty to one hundred is frequent.

Encyclopædia Londinensis.

Hunting Salmon.-Hunting fish on horseback seems a somewhat surprising sport; yet this mode has been adopted on the shallows at Whitehaven, with considerable success. Taking advantage of the retiring tide, persons have thus got between the salmon and the sea, and have fairly coursed them, until a spear could be accurately thrown:

forty or fifty have thus been hunted in a day. The plan is, after the fish is struck, to turn the horse to the shore. The Ocean, its Wonders.

Sir Walter Scott mentions similar sport on the Solway Firth. The rapidity of the salmon's motion is such, that this fish has been known to travel at the rate of sixteen miles an hour.

Wonders in Herefordshire.-Salmon are here in season all the year, and are found in the river Wye. Bone Well, near Richard's Castle, is always full of bones of little fishes, of which it can never be emptied, but that they return again. Anglorum Speculum, p. 377.

The salmon were so plentiful in the Severn river, that they have been sold for two-pence halfpenny per pound, but now they fetch two shillings, and three and six-pence: they leave their salt water haunts, and are earlier in the Severn, than any other English river. In January, 1833, a very fine fish, nearly a yard in length, was discovered near the shore, close to where the warm water enters the river from the city engine, at the bottom of Newport-street; it was speared and brought into the city, the captor refused a sovereign for it.

Dr. Hasting's Nat. Hist. of Worcestershire.

At Lillingston Lovel two salmon were taken in a small brook, which may be stepped over, (a branch of the Ouse,) one a yard long, and the other a little less. The curious would be glad to know how they came there, near two hundred miles from the sea.-Plot's Natural History of Oxford.

The abundance of salmon is so great in the Kamtschatka rivers, as to force the water before them, and dam up the streams so as to make them overflow their banks, and great quantities of salmon are left on the dry ground,—if it was not for violent winds, assisted by the bears and wild dogs feeding on them, the fish left would soon produce a pestilence, their stench is so powerful. Daniel.

In the famous cruives, or weirs, for taking salmon in the river Galway, where they are kept until sold, in a large pool supplied with running water, it is a most beautiful spectacle to watch them playing about. Angler in Ireland.

By the appellation of white and red fish, the peasantry distinguish the salmon of Goolamore, when in and out of season; indeed, the colour is such a perfect indicative of health, that any person who has frequented a salmon river will, on

D

seeing a fish rise, tell with accuracy the state of his condition. Wild Sports of the West.

The salmon fishery in New Caledonia commences about the middle of July, and ceases in October, this is a busy period for the natives; their method of catching the salmon is ingenious, as practised by the natives of the Columbia river. A certain part of the river is enclosed by stakes about twelve feet high, and extended about thirty feet from the shore; a netting of rods is attached to the stakes, to prevent the salmon running through; a conical machine, called a vorveau, is next formed, about eighteen feet long and five broad, and is made of rods about one inch and a quarter asunder, and lashed to hoops with whattaps, a tough fibrous root, used in sewing bark to the canoes, one end is formed like a funnel-to admit the fish, two smaller machines of equal length are joined to it, they are raised a little out of the water, and the salmon, in their ascent, leap into the boot, or broad part of it, and fall into the space, where they are easily killed with spears; when abundant, the natives take eight or nine hundred daily.

Growth. The salmon smelts, sprods, and morths, go down the river at Salisbury the beginning of May; the salmon smelts weigh

about three or four ounces, the morth and sprod about three ounces each, the smelts return in seven weeks, and weigh about twelve pounds, the morths in nine weeks, and weigh about two pounds, the sprods about the same time, and weigh three quarters of a pound. The gentleman who rented the fishery at the time gave the accounts; they were known by a wire passed through some of their back fins, by the fishermen, on going out. Gent. Mag.

A salmon taken out on the 7th of March, in the river Mersey, weighed seven pounds; being marked with scissars on the back fins and tail, it was again turned into the river, and being retaken on the 7th March of the following year, it was found to weigh seventeen pounds.

Gent. Mag. vol. lxxxviii. p. 461.

Salmon grows very fast; it is now ascertained that grilse, or young salmon, of from two and a half to three pounds weight, have been sent to the London markets in the month of May, the spawn from which they came having only been deposited in the preceding October or November, and the overtaking three months of the time to quicken. It has also been ascertained by experiment, that a grilse which weighed six pounds, in February, after spawning, has,