Leaper, the Story of an Atlantic Salmon

December release.

Leaper broke out of his pale pink egg late in March, when ice still hid the banks of the stream. For two years he fed and grew in his quiet pool, and then the time came to start his journey to the sea. The rushing current swept him swiftly downstream, past dangerous mink and heron and through city-polluted water. At last Leaper entered the ocean, but there were dangers here too—huge sharks, schools of tuna, and the trolling lines of fishing boats.

Three years passed before the salmon felt the mysterious urge to return to the stream where he had hatched. Now he faced the most difficult challenge of all. He drove through gill nets, over ten-foot falls, up fish ladders, constantly battling the current. Battered and worn, he finally nosed into his own pool and found new eggs to be fertilized.

Like all Mr. McClung's nature study books, his story of an Atlantic salmon is set against a living background whose rivers and seas, and changing seasons are described and pictured with imagination as well as realism.

Cover by Pierre Jacques Smit, circa 1894.

For those who want to read Robert McClung, without a snake!