146 DB. w. c. m'tsttosh ok the food and 



maintains tbat there is not a single fact in the history of British 

 salmon to support this opinion, and concluding thus : — " As to their 

 feeding regularly in rivers, Mr. Young's experiments have nega- 

 tived the assertion beyond all doubt." Tarrell gives the authority 

 of Paber to support the assertion that it feeds on small fishes 

 and various small marine animals ; and Dr. Fleming says, " their 

 favourite food in the sea is the sand-eel." Others confirm the 

 latter statement, and add that within flood-mark some salmon 

 have been taken with two, and some with three fuU-sized herrings 

 in their stomachs. 



In order to test the accuracy of the above conclusions with 

 regard to the Tay, I examined the stomachs and intestines of 

 upwards of a hundred salmon and grilse caught in the river from 

 the commencement of the season in February to its ending in 

 September of this year. The salmon in its young condition feeds 

 freely enough ; for the stomaclas and intestines of the parr from 

 Stormontfield ponds are gorged to an extreme degree with beetles, 

 flies, larvae, larvse-tubes, and minute Crustacea, while those of the 

 smolts are also well filled. Indeed the voracity of young parr 

 has cost them their lives in instances where they have been too 

 freely fed with small flies. Such being the nature of the fish 

 from its earliest age, one is sceptical at first sight in regard to the 

 statement that the grilse and salmon do not feed in fresh water at 

 all. Professor Owen* observes that the salmon, in common with 

 many other fishes, when hooked or netted, empties its stomach by 

 an instinctive act of fear, or to facilitate escape by lightening its 

 load ; so that the stomach, thus cleared of its contents, exhibits 

 subsequently, for reward to the investigator, only the tiny animal- 

 cules, which, having been swallowed with more substantial fare, 

 escaped ejection by lurking in the gastric mucus. "Were such the 

 case, an explanation would be readily given to the fact that the 

 stomach of a fish which possesses so powerful a circidatory appa- 

 ratus, and whose mucalar tissues undergo a continual waste, should 

 thus frequently be found empty. But if the salmon so fared, we 

 should expect to find the intestines at least well filled with the 

 debris of such food, since it cannot very easily vomit it after it has 

 passed the pylorus ; and the very terror which impels it to dis- 

 gorge in one case may entirely paralyse its efibrts to do so in 

 another. 



In its usual condition, the stomach is coated internally with a 

 consistent white mucus of great tenacity, well calculated to hold 



* Lect. on Comp. Anat. : Fishes, p. 237. 



