ISO ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



others had become slightly tinged from some weeks' or 

 months' sojourn in the river. 



With February set in a spell of warm, dry weather ; the 

 river fell very low, and the fish would look at nothing. My 

 companion, weary of whipping a dwindling stream, declared 

 he would go up and cast a fly on Loch More a shallow 

 sheet of water, whence the Thurso runs a course of some 

 twenty miles to the sea. It is not usual to fish it until the 

 beginning of April. It was three o'clock on a February 

 afternoon before he got out a boat. Before dark, which 

 falls very early in a Caithness winter, he had four salmon 

 averaging 1 7 Ibs. Evidently the loch was full of fish which 

 had been running into it ever since the previous November, 

 but no further attempt was made to take them until, as 

 usual, the anglers moved up to Strathmore Lodge at the 

 end of March from their early quarters on the lower reaches. 



Now, what motive impelled these big fish to run into 

 Loch More during the dark winter months ? The lake does 

 not average more than nine feet in depth, and is usually a 

 solid sheet of ice, often until far into March. The most 

 probable hypothesis is, that they had fed in the sea till they 

 could feed no longer ; appetite failed, and they returned 

 " home." For it may be assumed, I think, as cJiose jugee 

 that these anadromous fish belong to are natives of the 

 fresh water, and that their migration to the sea is no more 

 than an excursion in search of food which river and lake will 

 not afford. 



The habits of another anadromous fish, the eel, are pre- 

 cisely converse to those of the salmon. The eel spawns in 

 the sea, and must therefore be deemed a native of salt water. 

 The ascent of rivers and streams by the elvers " eel-fare," 

 as the Saxons scientifically termed it, meaning that the 

 young eels " fared " up from the sea is one of the best 

 marked of our vernal phenomena. The eel, unlike the 

 salmon, finds plenty of suitable diet in fresh water, including, 

 unluckily, a large proportion of salmon ova and fry ; but, 

 like the salmon, the reproductive organs of the eel remain 

 undeveloped until it returns to its native region. The eel, 

 so far as we can trace its economy, spawns but once, and 

 does not return to the fresh water. We assume that the 



