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SPECIES OF THE SALMON. 45 



" become sea-trouts, and some of them fork-tailed, 

 resembling a small gilse ; several of the fish con- 

 ( tinued in the pond for two or three years after- 

 wards, and actually spawned, but the Bleachy 

 " having failed and gone into Lancashire, the 

 " banks which confined them were broken by idle 

 " persons, and the fish escaped into the Eden. 

 " Whether this experiment may satisfy the people 

 " in Devon, I know not, but at present we are pretty 

 " well convinced here as to what whiting or sal- 

 " mon-peal are ; in fact, they become salmon. 



In the year 1819, a number of whitings were 

 marked at King Garth on Eden, by cutting off 

 " the dead fin, and sloping their tails, and on the 

 " 27th of July, 1820, one of them was again taken 

 " there a large gilse, weighing nine pounds. 



The names given to whitings or salmon-peal are 

 various throughout the kingdom: at Berwick they 

 " are called sprints ; at Dumfries, Annan, and the 

 " south of Scotland, her lings (from yearlings) ; in 

 " Dorsetshire, sterlings or last springs ; at Montrose, 

 " Aberdeen, Banff, &c. blacknebs; in many of the 

 " old Scottish statutes, smolts, in contradistinction 

 " to salmon-fry or smelts ; at Carlisle and in Cum- 

 " berland, xvhitings ; in Lancaster, smouls ; in 

 Devon, salmon-peal ; and in almost every other 

 county and river by a different name." 

 I think nothing need be added after this to 

 prove that the salmon-fry first come to the peal, 

 then to the sea-trout, then to gilse, or young sal- 

 mon, and finally, to salmon themselves , we may say 



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