I tried every lure I could think of, to tempt these lordly salmon. The most killing salmon-flies of Scotch, Irish, and English ties, thrown in the most approved fashion, were trailed close to their noses; such flies as would have coaxed any old experienced salmon in the civilised world of waters to forget his caution. Hooks, cunningly baited with live fish, aquatic larvæ, and winged insects, were scorned, and not even honoured with a sniff. Others of the Commission also tried their powers of fascination, but with equally unsuccessful results. I have opened a very large number of salmon at various Indian fishing-stations, on their first arrival, and during every stage of their wasting vitality, and after death had ended their sufferings; and not in a solitary instance did I ever discover the trace of food in the stomach or intestinal canal. But in every case where a salmon was taken in the tideway or saltwater, I invariably found the remains of small fish and marine animals in its stomach; and in the estuaries and long inland canals that so strangely intersect the coast-line of British Columbia, salmon are readily and easily caught with hook and line; clearly showing to my mind, that whilst in salt and brackish water the North-western spring-salmon feed and fatten, but, after quitting their ocean-haunts for the cold fresh-water, they starve, waste, and die, as a lamp goes out from sheer want of oil. Surely, where hundreds of salmon are split in a day, as at the Kettle Falls, it is fair to assume that if they took any food, by chance a fish would be caught immediately after its meal, with enough evidence in the stomach to prove the fact of having broken its fast; but such proof is never discoverable. Digestion would scarcely be more rapid in the rivers than it is in the ocean and estuary, where we know they eat. Open a salmon and examine its stomach at any time, caught either in nets or with hook and line, and food in various stages of digestion will be invariably found. Another proof that they undergo a rigid and persistent lent is found in the rapid wasting of all the tissues that goes on during their sojourn in fresh-water. Allowing for the consumption of material requisite for the purposes of reproduction, and the wear-and-tear consequent on making their way up stiff currents, leaping falls, and laboriously toiling up rocky _canions_—still I contend, if only a partial equivalent was resupplied in the shape of food, waste would not go on to the actual death of the muscles, that slough away in large pieces, as the exhausted fish makes feeble efforts to struggle on; dying at last a loathsome mass of rotting animal matter.