It is the prevailing impression that the salmon have some special instinct which leads them to return to spawn in the same spawning grounds where they were originally hatched. We fail to find any evidence of this in the case of the Pacific coast salmon, and we do not believe it to be true. It seems more probable that the young salmon, hatched in any river, mostly remain in the ocean within a radius of twenty, thirty, or forty miles of its mouth. These, in their movements about in the ocean, may come into contact with the cold waters of their parent rivers, or perhaps of any other river, at a considerable distance from the shore. In the case of the quinnat and the blue-back, their "instinct" leads them to ascend these fresh waters, and in a majority of cases these waters will be those in which the fishes in question were originally spawned. Later in the season the growth of the reproductive organs leads them to approach the shore and to search for fresh waters, and still the chances are that they may find the original stream. But undoubtedly many fall salmon ascend, or try to ascend, streams in which no salmon was ever hatched. It is said of the Russian River and other California rivers, that their mouths in the time of low water in summer generally become entirely closed by sand bars, and that the salmon, in their eagerness to ascend them, frequently fling themselves entirely out of water on the beach. But this does not prove that the salmon are guided by a marvelous geographical instinct which leads them to their parent river. The waters of Russian River soak through these sand bars, and the salmon "instinct," we think, leads them merely to search for fresh waters. This matter is much in need of further investigation; at present, however, we find no reason to believe that the salmon enter the Rogue River simply because they were spawned there, or that a salmon hatched in the Clackamas River is any the more likely on that account to return to the Clackamas than to go up the Cowlitz or the Deschutes. "At the hatchery on Rogue River, the fish are stripped, marked and set free, and every year since the hatchery has been in operation some of the marked fish have been re-caught. The young fry are also marked, but none of them have been recaught." This year the run of silver salmon in Frazer's River was very light, while on Puget Sound the run was said by the Indians to be greater than ever known before. Both these cases may be due to the same cause, the dry summer, low water, and consequent failure of the salmon to find the rivers. The run in the Sound is much more irregular than in the large rivers. One year they will abound in one bay and its tributary stream and hardly be seen in another, while the next year the condition will be reversed. At Cape Flattery the run of silver salmon for the present year was very small, which fact was generally attributed by the Indians to the birth of twins at Neah Bay.