"Bob Weinberger" wrote in message
news:w2Bii.8251$DM4.3865@trndny06...

"Wolfgang" wrote in message
...
From "Science Sketches" by David Starr Jordan
Fourth Edition
A. C. McClurg and Company
Chicago
1911

Interesting read even if the writer makes a glaring error - A Salmon born
in the Cowlitz going to the upper Snake River basin ( "foot of the
Bitterroot Mts". - sounds like the Clearwater River) to spawn - roughly
600 river miles upstream from the mouth of its natal river.

I just tried to find an earlier edition on Google books.....without success.
Meanwhile, the author's preface, dated April 30, 1896, makes it seem likely
that, while some of the content changed over the years, "The Story of a
Salmon" was included in the first edition, published in 1887, as far as I
can tell. At any rate, Jordan states clearly that all of the essays in the
book originally appeared elsewhere in various publications. Thus, by 1911,
the publishing date of the 4th edition, "The Story of a Salmon" was
presumably 15 years old, at the very least, and quiet likely 24 or more.
Very odd that such an obvious error (I haven't checked it myself.....I trust
you know what you're talking about....in any case, you undoubtedly know a
great deal more about it than I, to whom the possibility of an error never
occurred) should go unchallenged through three editions.....not to mention
its original appearance elsewhere. Certainly, the world was a very
different place at the turn of the 20th century than it is today, a hundred
years later, when something like that would be around the world within
minutes of the book's first reading, but "sporting" literature enjoyed a
very large, well traveled, and sophisticated readership even in Jordan's
day.

We got us genuine mystery here!

Wolfgang
for god's sake, PLEASE!, is there a reference librarian in the house?