A salmon vainly attempted to leap up a cascade. After trying a few
thousand times, he grew so fatigued that he began to leap less and
think more. Suddenly an obvious method of surmounting the difficulty
presented itself to the salmonic intelligence.
"Strange," he soliloquized, as well as he could in the water,--"very
strange I did not think of it before! I'll go above the fall and leap
downwards."
So he went out on the bank, walked round to the upper side of the
fall, and found he could leap over quite easily. Ever afterwards when
he went up-stream in the spring to be caught, he adopted this plan. He
has been heard to remark that the price of salmon might be brought
down to a merely nominal figure, if so many would not wear themselves
out before getting up to where there is good fishing.