50 THE SALMON. 



It will be thus seen, that the parties struggling 

 against the Stormontfield decision differ mainly on the 

 matter of fact whether the conditions of the experimental 

 ponds were such as to stimulate or to retard the growth 

 of the fish's instincts — whether, as Mr. Thomas Stoddart 

 expressed it, " that, being kept in a state of comparative 

 confinement, they had their growth stinted and their in- 

 stincts overruled ;" or whether, as others maintain, by 

 living in a warmer climate, by being better supplied 

 with food, and by getting, as it were, an " assisted pass- 

 age" as emigrants, they had not their growth hastened 

 and their instincts prematurely developed. Both parties 

 really proceed more or less necessarily in ignorance or 

 assumption of the actual facts, the probabilities, how- 

 ever, preponderating considerably in favour of those who 

 maintain that the ponds must have a stimulating effect. 

 Both parties also assume that the temperature of the 

 water, the supply of food, and the ease or difficulty of 

 egress, affect one way or other, to the extent of exactly a 

 year, certain natural changes, for which it would seem 

 more rational to assume that nature had appointed an 

 unchangeable season. That gro\\i;h, and even sexual 

 maturity, could be affected to such an extent by such 

 means is quite credible ; but, as we have before sug- 

 gested, it is not so easy to believe that such influences 

 could alter by a whole year the time fixed by nature for 

 not only turning from brown to white, but for removing 

 from fresh water into salt. By far the most probable 

 conclusion is, that the peculiar circumstances of the 

 ponds did not operate one way or the other, but that 

 we have been seeing in them just what goes on every 

 year in the open river. 



