the king, as it may be called, of the river migrators, the Salmon. In our own country this noble fish is too high-priced to form a general article of food, and may be reckoned amongst the luxuries of the rich man's table; but in others, especially amongst some of the Northwestern American tribes, they are gifts of Providence, which form their principal food at all seasons. One, which Sir George Mackenzie fell in with, in his journey from Canada to the Pacific, were perfect Ichthyophagites, and would touch no other animal food. These people construct, with great labour and ingenuity, across their streams, salmon weirs, which are formed with timber and gravel, and elevated nearly four feet above the level of the water; beneath machines are placed, into which the salmon fall when they attempt to leap over the weir. On either side is a large frame of timber-work, six feet above the level of the upper water, in which passages are left for the salmon, leading into the machines. When they catch their salmon they string them and suspend them, at first, in the river. The women are employed in preparing and curing these fish; for this purpose they appear to roast them first, and then suspend them on the poles that run along the beams of their houses, in which there are usually from three to five hearths, the heat and smoke from which contribute, no doubt, to their proper curing.

The salmon, indeed, frequents every sea, the arctic as well as the equatorial; it is found even in great lakes and inland seas, as the Caspian, into which it is even affirmed to make its way by a subterranean channel from the Persian Gulf it goes as far south as New Holland and the Australian seas; but, it is said never to have been found in the Mediterranean, and appears to have been unknown to Aristotle. Pliny mentions it as a river fish, preferred to all marine ones by the inhabitants of Gaul. It traverses the whole length of the largest rivers. It reaches Bohemia by the Elbe, Switzerland by the Rhine, and the Cordilleras of America by the mighty Maragnon, or River of Amazons, whose course is more than three thousand miles. In temperate climates the salmon quits the sea early in the spring, when the waves are driven by a strong wind against the river currents. It enters the rivers of France in the beginning of the autumn, in September; and in Kamtchatka and North America still later. In some countries this is called the salmon-wind. They rush into rivers that are freest from ice, or where they are carried by the highest tide, favored by the wind; they prefer those streams that are most shaded. They leave the sea in numerous bands, formed with great regularity. The largest individual, which is usually a female, takes the lead, and is followed by others of the same sex, two and two,

each pair being at the distance of, from three to six feet from the preceding one; next come the old, and after them the young males in the same order.

The noise they make in their transit, heard from a distance, sounds like a far off storm. In the heat of the sun and in tempests, they keep near the bottom; at other times they swim a little below the surface. In fair weather they move slowly, sporting as they go at the surface, and wandering again and again from their direct route; but when alarmed they dart forward with such rapidity that the eye can scarcely follow them. They employ only three months in ascending to the sources of the Maragnon, the current of which is remarkably rapid, which is at the rate of nearly forty miles a day; in a smooth stream or lake, their progress would increase in a fourfold ratio. Their tail is a very powerful organ, and its muscles have wonderful energy; by placing it in their mouth they make of it a very elastic spring, for letting it go with violence they raise themselves in the air to the height of, from twelve to fifteen feet, and so clear the cataract that impedes their course; if they fail in their first attempt, they continue their efforts till they have accomplished it. The female is stated to hollow out a long and deep excavation in the gravelly bed of the river to

receive her spawn, and when deposited to cover up, but this admits of some doubt.

it

Amongst the migrations of fishes, I must not neglect those that take place in consequence of the water in the ponds or pools that they inhabit being dried up: some of these are very extraordinary, and prove that when the Creator gave being to these animals, he foresaw the circumstances in which they would be placed, and mercifully provided them with means of escape from dangers to which they were necessarily exposed.

In very dry summers, the fishes that inhabit the above situations, are reduced often to the last extremities, and endeavour to relieve themselves by plunging, first their heads, and afterwards their whole bodies, in the mud to a considerable depth; and so, though many in such seasons perish, some are preserved till a rainy one again supplies them with the element so indispensable to their life. Carp, it is known, may be kept and fed a very long time in nets in a damp cellar, a faculty which fits them for retaining their vitality when they bury themselves at such a depth as to shelter them from the heat.

But others, when reduced to this extremity, desert their native pool, and travel in search of another that is better supplied with water. This has long been known of eels, which wind, by

night, through the grass in search of water, when so circumstanced. Dr. Hancock, in the Zoological Journal, gives an account of a species of fish, called, by the Indians, the Flat-head Hassar, and belonging to a genus of the family of the Siluridans, which is instructed by its Creator, when the pools, in which they commonly reside, in very dry seasons, lose their water, to take the resolution of marching by land in search of others in which the water is not evaporated. These fish grow to about the length of a foot, and travel in large droves with this view; they move by night, and their motion is said to be like that of the two-footed lizard. A strong serrated arm constitutes the first ray of its pectoral fin. Using this as a kind of foot, it should seem, they push themselves forwards, by means of their elastic tail, moving nearly as fast as a man will leisurely walk. The strong plates which envelope their body, probably, facilitate their progress, in the same manner as those under the body of serpents, which in some degree perform the office of feet. It is affirmed by the Indians, that they are furnished with an internal supply of water sufficient for their

PLATE XII. FIG. 1. is a species of Callicthys, a fish of the same habits with the Doras. FIG. 2. is the pectoral ray of another Siluridan, which was dug up in a village near Barham, but which is not a fossil bone.