146 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



THE HABITS OF SALMON. 

 By the Right Hon. Sir HERBERT MAXWELL, Bart, M.P., F.R.S., etc. 



So long as Mr. Harvie-Brown records his own observations, 

 one feels that, even in so obscure a problem as the life-history 

 of the salmon, he may be trusted as a sure-footed guide. 

 If, therefore, I venture to demur to some of the hypotheses 

 in the writings of so well trained a student of nature, it is 

 where he asks his readers to accept certain conclusions 

 resting upon wholly a priori grounds. The whole of the 

 argument in his paper on British Salmonid?e in the April 

 number of the " Annals," or nearly the whole of it, seems to 

 rest on the assumption that salmon normally spawn once in 

 each year ; and this assumption leads Mr. Harvie-Brown to 

 condemn a most valuable class of salmon as " these oldest 

 and most worthless fish." 



I allude to what he says about the large fish which run 

 up the Tay during the winter months, and are taken as 

 " early spring salmon " with spinning baits. Now, I have 

 never fished Loch Tay, and therefore have never seen these 

 fish : it may therefore appear the height of presumption to 

 offer any criticism upon Mr. Harvie-Brown's diagnosis of 

 them. But they are either true spring fish, or something 

 else. Accepting Mr. Harvie-Brown's opinion that they are 

 something else, then I am very familiar agreeably familiar 

 with their analogues in other waters. 



Mr. Harvie-Brown identifies these large Tay fish with 

 the well-known " grey schule " of the Tweed. I venture to 

 dispute that conclusion. The "grey schule " fish are gravid ; 

 at all events their reproductive organs are in an advancing 

 stage of development, and they spawn before returning to 

 the sea ; whereas in the winter-running fish of the Tay and 

 many other rivers the reproductive organs are as quiescent 

 and undeveloped as those of the real spring fish which follow 

 them one, two, three, and four months later. 



The assumption to which I demur is that every fish 

 entering a river and ascending to the breeding-grounds does 

 so to spawn. If this is not an assumption, it must rest on 

 complete evidence ; but there is not only no satisfactory 



