40 SPECIES OF THE SALMON. 



of a different species from a black one, or a hand- 

 some horse from an ugly one. 



9. Sturt says, that the salmon smelts, about the 

 beginning of June, begin to return into the rivers, 

 being grown to twelve or sixteen inches in length. 

 What can he mean, or what can this be, but the 

 salmon-peal ? 



10. The salmon-peal is not described by any 

 author entitled to credit, as a distinct species, or 

 even described otherwise than incidentally as the 

 young of the salmon. 



11. There are always more smelts than peal, more 

 peal than truff, more truff than salmon : thus ex- 

 hibiting a regular series of diminution, which is a 

 strong argument in favour of the hypothesis. 



From these facts, the reader is left to draw his 

 own conclusions ; I do not claim for them the rank 

 of positive proofs, but they are surely strong corro- 

 borative circumstances. Thus far, however, the 

 evidence is all one way. I am now about to state 

 a fact of an intermediate distinction, something 

 more than presumptive, and yet, not absolutely po- 

 sitive. On the late breach in Totness weir, which 

 happened exactly in the season when salmon ascend 

 the rivers to spawn, the fish of course availed them- 

 selves of the opportunity. A greater number were 

 speared that season than had been so taken for many 

 years — of course a proportionate number escaped. 

 I remarked to one of the fishermen on the Dart, 

 who has been such from his boyhood, that we 



