SMOLTS 17 



river existence in front of it. Feeding is not 

 apparently carried on as steadily in winter as in 

 summer, if we may judge from the habits of parr 

 reared in ponds, and growth is not therefore 

 steady, but in a year the little fish is 85- to 4 inches 

 long. At two years the fish becomes a smolt, the 

 characteristics of which will be referred to presently. 

 All the rearing experiments show that in this 

 country the normal age for the silvery scales to 

 appear and for the instinct of seaward migration to 

 show itself is when the fish are about twenty- five 

 to twenty-six months old. Every one knows also 

 that the chief season for descent is the spring. The 

 old rhyme that the " first floods of May take all 

 the smolts away " is not far wrong. Climatic 

 conditions determine the amount of variation from 

 the normal, and we may state that mild springs, in 

 inducing an abundance of feeding early in the season, 

 seem to produce an early descent instead of a 

 late descent, as would be the case if the fish went 

 down solely for the purpose of procuring food. From 

 the end of April to the beginning of June is the 

 season of chief descent to the sea. 



With regard to the late spawning times in the 

 Border rivers, to which reference has been made, 

 I would here venture to express the belief that we 

 have a condition brought about, not by any natural 

 cause, but by the action of man in regulating the 

 fisheries so as to allow an undue amount of netting 

 to continue too long each season. If the amount of 

 netting in confined waters was reduced and the re- 

 maining nets wisely regulated, the earlier running 



B 



