) 
] 
529 
others, as I know from having had specimens sent me, the 
laspring is really a par.” At page 42 he gives a good figure of 
the par, and remarks “that this little fish, one of the smallest 
of the British Salmonide, has given rise to more discussion 
than any other species of the genus.” Continuing that it has 
frequently been insisted upon as the young:-of the salmon, and 
local regulations have as generally been invoked for its preser- 
vation. That the par is not the young of the salmon, or 
indeed of any other of the larger species of Salmonide, as still 
considered by some, is sufficiently obvious from the circumstance 
that pars by hundreds may be taken in the rivers all the sum- 
mer, long after the fry of the year of the larger migratory 
species have gone down to the sea; and the greater part of 
those pars, taken even in autumn, do not exceed five inches in 
length, when no example of the young of the salmon can be 
found under sixteen or eighteen inches, and the young of the 
bull-trout and salmon-trout are large in proportion.” He also 
alludes to an opinion which prevailed that pars were hybrids, 
and all of them males. HeysHam found 196. females out of 
395. YarReEwt likewise remarks the ‘skegger’ of the Thames 
is the par or samlet.” 
Russet remarks that about ten years before what were really 
the first decisive experiments, (1824 or 1825.) Mr Scrorz (Days 
and Nights of Salmon Fishing) wrote a long letter to the Right 
Hon. T. F. Kennepy, M.P.,in which the theory or rather fact 
that the par is the young of the salmon was stated with posi- 
tiveness and argued with great clearness and force. Also 
‘the finding in spring of the distinctive marks of the par under 
the silver scales of the smolt.” 
About eight years later, and still previous to the decisive 
experiments, he continued, “‘James Hoae, the Ettrick Shepherd, 
gave the world some very good reasons of his own for holding 
the par to be the young of the salmon, reasons founded on 
observation and experience, partly on his having observed the 
gradual assumption of the migratory dress by the par in the 
spring months, partly on his having caught a grilse fish which 
he had marked when a par, or when in their transition-state 
AA2 
