PROLIFIC AUTUMNAL SHOWERS. 169 



invariably commences — I mean the spawning 

 season — at the heads of rivers, and one can see 

 that the first pair spawning are fish that by escaping 

 the nets and cruives have made their way up even 

 before the fishing operations are over. Many of 

 these fish are of the category of those, which on 

 Sundays when the cruives are open and netting 

 has for the time ceased, have entered the rivers 

 and ascended safely to the shallows. They are 

 autumnal spawners, the best and most prolific of 

 all, and they would be by far more numerous if 

 netting ceased some time in August. Why they 

 are the most prolific I will explain. It is in a 

 word, because their spawning operations are over 

 before the setting in of winter storms, and their 

 attendant heavy rains and floods. Before the 

 period of the inundation of rivers, the salmon -beds 



smolts must be then between the middle of April and the 

 middle of May, not in the last fortnight of the April and 

 the first fortnight of the May that succeed the " throng " 

 time of spawning, but, according to Mr. Young between 

 the April and May of the first year after that, and accord- 

 ing to Mr. Shaw, not until the second year after. It is not 

 necessary for me to say that I am convinced of the accuracy 

 of Mr. Young's experiments and of his statements, the 

 result of them, and of very long and clear-headed obser- 

 vation. Salmon-fry and smolts are found in salmon rivers 

 nearly all the year round. Some of the fry represented in 

 the plates were taken from the Shin in November. 



