Return to the River

As a work of the imagination the life story of Spring, the Chinook salmon, is perhaps somewhat less exciting than Grim: The Story of a Pike. But it is incomparably more striking as news. The completion of the Grand Coulee dam, which permanently cuts the salmon off from hundreds of miles of Columbia River breeding waters, has led the government into an elaborate and costly experiment in artificial propagation, the outcome of which cannot be known within four years. If it succeeds, the salmon fry hatched from the spawn of salmon born in those upper waters will themselves be content to spawn in the lower tributaries in which they are being released as fingerlings. If it fails, they will thrash themselves to death against the impassable barrier in an effort to breed where their parents bred. On the unknown outcome of this human attempt to reeducate nature hangs the future of a great industry of the Northwest, not to mention the considerations of sport and ot sentiment involved. These circumstances are the immediate occasion of Mr. HaigBrown’s story, and the life cycle of the female Chinook salmon from its mother’s spawning to its own, as ascertained by the recapture of occasional marked fish, is the material. In order to give the reader something more than a salmon’s-eye view of the future, the story is interlarded with passages of dialogue between a young government biologist and an elderly ex-Senator who happens to be interested in both fly-fishing and conservation. W.F.

W. H. C. WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN

R. E. D. RICHARD E. DANIELSON

E. D. ELIZABETH DREW

W. F. WILSON FOLLETT

R. M. G. ROBERT M. GAY

R. S. H. ROBERT S. HILLYER