THE BREEDING OF SALMON. 123 



kept for a year or two in a pond at Bowhill, from 

 which wire-grating prevented any egress, they were 

 found to have increased greatly in length, without 

 anytliing like a proportionate increase in thickness, 

 but had bright scales, and exhibited a great deal of 

 restlessness in their confinement. Similar experiments 

 have been made with similar results in other parts of 

 the country. We do not know whether the fish still 

 remain in the pond. 



tervals for the last fifteen years, however, experiments as to 

 the history and habits of the salmon have been conducted at 

 the mouth of the Tweed. Smolts have been marked on several 

 occasions, by cutting their fins, or by twisting loops of thin 

 silver wire into their gills or tails. Marking by the mutilation 

 of fins is however a most unsatisfactory method of making such 

 experiments ; and nothing certain can be affirmed from it. But 

 of the smolts marked with silver wire, three, we believe, have 

 been recaptured as grilse. The results are contrary to the 

 common belief of the grilse's age. We have seen two. one of 

 which was marked with wire in the tail as a smolt in May 1851 

 and taken again as a 4-lb grilse in August 1852 ; the oilier Avas 

 marked with wire in the gill, as a smolt in May 1855, and 

 caught again as a grilse in 1856. The former of these fish is at 

 Berwick, the other is in the possession of the Duke of Rox- 

 burghe at Floors Castle. !Many kelts have also been marked to 

 ascertain the dilFerence between their condition when keltcd 

 and when clean ; but, so far as we have heard, with nothing at 

 all like the surprisingly exact returns that ]\Ir, Andrew Young 

 of Invershin chronicles. Of a number of kelts of the salmo 

 eriox marked at the mouth of the Whitadder, one Avas shortly 

 afterwards caught at the mouth of the Tyne, another at Yar- 

 mouth, and the skeleton of a third, with its gutta-percha ticket, 

 was found in the stomach of a cod captured at Eyemouth! But 

 although the marking has been repeated annually, we do not 

 know that in a single instance a ticketed kelt has been recaught 

 as a clean fish. 



