of the Salmon Fish 205 



breed of the fish ; and a fourth attests that stake nets only catch 

 the fish when they are in the best season, that neither kelts 

 nor fry are taken in them, and that, if they were prohibited, 

 it would only be preserving the fish for the grampuses and 

 seals : in short, the evidence, both regarding their habits and 

 the best modes of catching them, having in view the pre- 

 servation and increase of the breed, is so completely contra- 

 dictory as to leave a doubt in the minds of every one who reads 

 it, and has no other means of forming an opinion. I will 

 endeavour to show, in some instances, which of these testi- 

 monies are correct, and it will be for your readers to judge 

 how far I succeed ; and I hope they will be so obliging as to 

 correct any errors I may fall into. 



1st, It is my opinion that the fry of salmon are much older, 

 when they leave the rivers, than seems to be generally sup- 

 posed, and that the growth of this fish is by no means so rapid 

 as it is considered to be by those who have written on the 

 subject. For several years previous to 1816, the salmon were 

 unable to ascend into the upper parts of the river Wharfe, 

 being prevented either by the high weirs in the lower parts, 

 or by some other cause; and, of course, there were no smelts 

 or par : but in that year, either the incessant rains of that 

 summer, or rumours of the formation of an association for the 

 protection of fish, or some other unknown cause, enabled 

 some salmon to ascend the river 30 or 40 miles, and to 

 spawn there. In the next spring (1817), there were no 

 smelts, but about September they began to rise at the very 

 small flies which the anglers in that river make use of: they 

 were then a little larger than minnows. In the spring of 

 1818, there were blue smelts, or what are generally known 

 as salmon fry, which went down to the sea in the May of that 

 year : but these were only part of the brood, the females only ; 

 the males remaining all that summer, being, at the period 

 when the females went down, very much smaller than they, 

 and what are called, in the Wharfe, grey smelts, and pinks 

 or par elsewhere. I have shown that there were two migra- 

 tions from the spawn of 1816 : but this was not all ; there still 

 remained a few smelts through the summer of 1819, which by 

 that time were from 4 oz. to 6 oz. in weight, and are known 

 by the anglers there as brambling smelts : the blue marks on 

 their sides are very distinct, and the fish a perfect smelt, ex- 

 cept that it is considerably larger. It is quite different from the 

 whitling, or sprod, which is not known in the Wharfe, at 

 least not in the upper parts of that river, whilst the brambling 

 is never seen in the Ribble. The brambling is a beautiful 

 fish, and it rises very freely both at the May fly and the arti- 



