floated by means of corks. The high seat of
the keener is sometimes a wooden erection
overlooking the river or the lake, and he
can himself occasionally, by pulling a cord,
adjust the net to capture the salmon.

The Scandinavians who first taught the chace
of the salmon could never have been excited
to it by the stuff sold at half-a-crown a
pound in large towns. Londoners and
Parisians delusively fancy they know the
taste of salmon. Bah! they might as well
pretend to know the taste of milk or water!
The Scandinavians had tasted salmon. They
knew what it was to feel a creamy slice
dissolving in the mouth. No wonder they
devoted their minds to the capture of such
food. Indeed, bears, seals, otters and
Scandinavians who catch and eat fresh salmon
show they know what is what. As for the
people in the Gallic and Britannic centres
of civilisation who buy dissections of the
genus Salmo at half-a-crown a pound, I can
only hope the principle of the aquariums or
fish tanks may speedily be applied in their
service. I make a present of the idea to any
man who has at hand a sufficiency of capital,
science, and patience.

Men, bears, otters, and seals, display their
various endowments in the different methods
they employ to catch salmon. The otters
watch in holes in the banks of the river for
an unwary prey. The bears make holes in
the Polar ice by jumping upon it until it
breaks, and then they watch like keeners until
the salmon approach the holes in search of
oxygenised water, which they may breathe as a
breath of fresh air. When the salmon approach,
the bears spring upon them and catch them.

During the salmon-fishing season at
Kamtschatka the salmon arrive in such numbers in
the creeks and rivers, that the bears catch them
without difficulty. The inhabitants say, a
bear can catch twenty or thirty salmon in a
night. The bears are such epicures that they
only eat the heads and backs, except when
hunger makes them less dainty. What the
bears would think of the salmon of London
and Paris this deponent will not say,
until he hears the opinion of a bear in the
witness-box. Seals hunt the salmon in the
sea and chace them up the rivers. The
Scottish Scandinavians, whatever their own
faults may be in reference to the salmon, love
them jealously and resent fiercely the attacks
of the bears, otters, and seals. Bears were
long ago extirpated from Scotland, and otters
are now rarely seen; but seals still occasionally
enter the Don in pursuit of salmon. Seal-
hunts are among the most interesting of the
recollections of my boyhood. When I was at
school in Old Aberdeen, which is about a
mile from the bridge of Don, a sacred
compact, bound the Don boys to send word
immediately to the "auld town" boys whenever
seals entered the river. The seal-hunt was a
thing to be seen at all risks. No amount of
flogging for absence from school, it was decided
unanimously, was worthy of a thought in
the comparison. Whenever a couple of seals
were reported to have entered the Don during
the night, a deputation of Don boys ran
with the news to the auld town. Generally,
however, before the auld town boys
reached the scene of action, the female-seal,
with the lively instinct of self-preservation
characteristic of her sex, had escaped to sea,
and the male seal alone was hunted in the
water. The salmon-fishers in their boats
intercepted his return to the sea. Whenever
he popped up his head above the
surface to breathe, three or four bullets
splashed the water around him. If he tried
to pass the line of boats which traversed the
river, he was sure to be struck by boat-hooks.
Sometimes he would take to land, where he
was speedily overtaken, as he runs awkwardly,
and he was easily despatched by a blow on
the nose. Sometimes a seal would give the
Don population an exhilarating occupation
and excitement from early morning until late
in the evening. The long pauses of silence,
while he disappeared under the water, the
uncertainty where he would reappear next,
the cracks of rifles, and shouts, and cries,
when his snout was seen; the discussions
whether he had been hit or not, and the
chances and vicissitudes of escape or capture
made up an excitement and pleasure which
well warranted the exclamation of every
boy, "when a seal is hunted in the Don, again,
may I be there to see." The boy-naturalists
who carefully examined the dead or dying
seals, decided they were just sea-dogs. When
they consulted their books about the phoca,
they were astonished to read suppositions
that the seals were the sirens of the ancients
who attracted men by their mild looks, and
deceived and devoured them. The species of
the Mediterranean must differ greatly from
the species of the northern seas, to prove
destructive seducers for men, whatever they
may be for fish.

The habits of the salmon direct the
occupations of the fishers. During the periods
of the year in which they could not fish, the
Scandinavians of the Don occupied themselves
with farming. Most of them cultivated
small farms, or crofts. Both a farmer and
fisher a Don man united in himself a
considerable range of useful knowledge and
practical accomplishment. An education inspector
might indeed give a poor report of his
acquirements, but the education inspector
himself if deprived of his access to the state
purse, and thrown upon his own resources,
might have proved an inferior man in the
equipments absolutely necessary for the
battle of life. Beading, writing, summing,
Scottish history, political and ecclesiastical,
and a knowledge of Calvinistic theology,
formed the book lore of every cottage. In
the long winter evenings the families visited
each other, night about. While the women
knitted stockings and the men mended nets,