Even in streams where a successful deposition of the ova has been accomplished, there never appears, as far as my observations have gone, any disposition in the parent-fish to return to the sea. Their instinct still prompts them to keep swimming up-stream, until you often find them with their noses worn quite off, their heads bruised and battered, fins and tail ragged and torn, bodies emaciated, thin, and flabby; the bright silvery tints dull and leaden in hue, a livid red streak extending along each side from head to tail, in which large ulcerous sores have eaten into the very vitals. The Indians say all the salmon that come up to spawn die; but if all do not die, I have no hesitation in saying that very few spring-salmon ever reach the saltwater after ascending the rivers to spawn. Why there should be this marvellous waste of salmon in the rivers of the North-west I am somewhat puzzled to imagine. The distance the fish have to travel from the sea up-stream, or the obstacles they may have to overcome, have clearly nothing to do with their dying. In the Chilukweyuk river the distance from the sea is not over 200 miles, and that clear from any kind of hindrance; and yet they die in thousands. In the Columbia they ascend a thousand miles to the Kettle Falls, and they have been caught many hundred miles above that; still they die just the same as in the shorter streams. Up the Snake river they push their way to the great Shoshonee Falls, over a thousand miles against a rocky stream, but perish there just as they do in the Sumass and Chilukweyuk rivers, which are close to the sea. Unlike the salmon in our own streams, the spring-salmon in North-western waters spawn in midsummer, when the water is at its lowest temperature and greatest flood-height, from the melting snow. As there is no impediment or hindrance to prevent them returning to the sea, why do they die in N.W. waters? In my opinion, from sheer starvation. Careful observations, made at various Indian fishing-stations and extending over a long space of time, have quite convinced me that salmon (I more particularly allude to the spring-fish) never feed after leaving saltwater. My reasons for thus thinking are, first, no salmon (as far as I know) has ever been tempted to take a bait of any kind in the fresh water above the tideway. The Indians all say that salmon never _eat_ when in the _rivers_; and I could never discover that they had any recorded instance, or even tradition, of a salmon being taken with bait.