The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1883-03-03 00:00:00

" THE LORDLY SALMON."

The Standard has an article on "Salmon," from
which we make the following extracts :
No fish on earth has ever engaged so large an
amount of human attention as the lordly salmon.
Blue-books have been devoted to his youth, his
adolescence, his maturity, and his old age; statutes
have been passed in order to encourage his matri-
monial projects, and to watch over the safety of
his tender years; treatises have been written
in abundance on where to find him, when to
entice him, how to catch him, and what to do with
him when caught. And yet he is not happy. All the
legislation in his favour, and all the artificial flies de-
signed to please his 'esthetic sensibilities, do not seem
to reconcile him to the dainty hook so cunningly con-
cealed within the twisted bunch of painted feathers.
To this day when he is hooked he kicks and plunges
like the veriest tittlebat, and has to be played and
humoured with as great tact and consideration as if he
were a rich relation of doubtful testamentary inten-
tions, or the leader of society in a small country town
where dinners are few and dances fewer.
Being a person of so much distinction, it is not odd
that the salmon should rejoice in various cdicttez at
various periods of his chequered existence. • . . In
his first, or freshman, year, he is known as a parr ;
then he takes a seaside trip, gets rid of his primitive
verdancy, and becomes a smolt • after that, he returns
again te fresh water as a grilse ; next, he g rows
into a salmon, pure and simple; and, finally,
having spawned and lost condition generally,
he goes seaward, his glory dimmed, as a poor
emaciated kelt or slat. The amount of erudition
that has been poured forth upon • these diverse
stages of the salmon's existence is only equalled
by the utter dryness of the details from the paint of
view of the general reader. But in spite of legislation,
science, and persevering, the salmon seems to dwindle
sadly every year. And yet they ought to be a fairly
prolific race, for the number of eggs laid yearly
by each female salmon exactly equals the entire
human population of Reading. If only four
out of this very long family survived in each
generation, the sum total of salmon in our rivers
ought just to double itself every year; instead
of which it shows a marked tendency to decrease.
And the moral of that is, as the Duchess in " Wonder-
land" would have said, that the infant mortality of
salmon must be very excessive, and that the duties of
a mother must be very ill understood indeed by the
parent fish. But then what can one expect from
a mother who habitually deserts her infants, not
only in the cradle, but even before they are born?
Besides claiming regal honours, however, (for it has
always been accounted the king of fish), the salmon
may also be considered as, in a very special and
eminent degree, an episcopal fish as well. At first
sight there seems to be little or no natural connection
between cathedrals and salmon; yet it is a real fact
that most of our cathedrals stand, or have
once stood, upon salmon--producing rivers, and
that they were not placed there without a good and
sufficient reason. The mediseval Churchman fasted
rigorously, it is true; but be fasted accerding to the
letter of the law only, and he did not overlook the
obvious epicurean advantage of a good Lenten supply
of salmon. In days when there was no railways to
distribute sea-fish from Billingsgate, and when cod
and soles were unknown luxuries at inland places,
our ancestors fully recognised the value of eels
and carp, of pike and lampreys, for Fridays and
fast-days ; and far more did they consider the
advisability of placing their religious establish-
mentos in the convenient neighbourhood of a
prolific salmon stream. We owe to the monks both
our carp ponds and our less desirable salmon weirs,
which have helped to crew e the present general dearth
of wilmon in England. Wood and water were the
two great monastic needs- but after these came an
abundant fish supply. So all the great salmon rivers
of England were lined along all their banks with
abbeys and cathedrals, which often disputed among
themselves the rights of fishery with true medimval
vigour and virulence. . . .
There is no luxury that palls more rapidly upon the
taste than salmon. Totvours perdriz may be bad
enough; but always salmon is a thousand times worse.
In some parts of the Canadian back-country the re-
currence of broiled salmon, boiled salmon, salmon
cutlets, and salmon steak at every meal becomes
a•ter a few weeks a trifle monotonous. To the
native palate, which has been brought trio on it and
to the manner born, this constant reappearance of
the self-same dish is taken as a matter of course ;
but to the newly -arrived Tenderfoot, or tourist tra-
veller from beyond the mill-pond, it grows at last
into a feeble joke. "Is there nothing else for break-
fast? " asked one such victim of colonial sympathy at
a backwoods inn, as a whole fish and a pot of
mustard were laid before him upon the table.
Nothing else 1" replied the host in surpri,e.
"
" Why, good heavens, there's salmon enough
there for six, ain't there?" "Yes," responded
the guest, mildly, " but 1 don't care for salmon."
"Well, then, thunder, pitch into the mustard 1"
was the consolatory rejoinder. It was in days
when our ancestors at home suffered from a similar
plethora of salmon that the famous myth of the
Severn apprentices must first have arisen. According
to that familiar, but doubtfully veracious legend, the
prentice-boys in towns along the banks of that great
salmon-breeding river used especially to covenant in
their indentures that they should not be compelled to
eat salmon more than three times weekly at the out-
side. Unfortunately, as in most other cases, this
time-honoured belief has met at last with a terrible
iconoclast in the person of that late distinguished
lover of salmon, Mr. Frank Buckland. The genial
inspector of fisheries devoted a large part of his atten-
tion to hunting up an actual copy of any indentures
containing this interesting proviso. As usual, when
diligently searched for, it turned out to be a case of
non eat inventus—the indentures were never forth-
coming, Once, indeed, Mr. Buckland thought he had
almost got them. An old woman in a small cottage
had preserved a copy, and could find it for him easily;
but after a little waiting, and a great deal of hunting,
the old woman came to the disappointing conclusion
tint she nihet have accidentally burnt the precious

document the week before last. So the story
went the way of many another cherished belief, and
was numbered with King Alfred's cakes and King
Richard's humpback, among the exploded legends of
our unsuspecting childhood. , .