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grilse were reported to the superintendent as captured, having 
this year’s mark, not one having the ring was among those 
taken. The grilse in 1856 were very numerous, but marked 
ones were not detected. A few of the fry that left the pond in 
May or June, 1855, were reported as having been caught this 
season as salmon. 
Dr J. Davy (“ Physiological Researches,” 1863, page 221) 
concludes “ that a par—a distinct species—is a creature of the 
imagination, and that the idea of such a species ought to be 
opposed, both as founded in error, and as affording a pretence 
to allow of the wasteful, mischievous capture of the salmon and 
sea-trout fry.” 
Russet (“The Salmon,” 1864, page 33) observes that the 
chief questions are, or have been :—Ilst. Is the par the young 
of the salmon in earliest infancy? 2nd. At what age does the 
smolt emigrate to salt water? 3rd. After what length of 
absence does the emigrant return to fresh water? 4th. In 
what state does he return, “‘grilse or salmon?” Continuing, 
“that the par is the infant young of the salmon was a fact so 
clear, or a conclusion so inevitable, before the experiments 
(Suaw’s) were made, that it would not be hard to conceive how 
it could ever have been in doubt. Were it not that, even after 
the experiments have furnished the most ample demonstration, 
there are still to be found a considerable number of people who, 
instead of having been convinced, have only been enraged.” 
_“ Every schoolboy on the banks of the Tweed (where almost 
alone the S. salar and S. eriow are found together in plenty) 
knows at a glance the difference between the smolt of the 
salmon and of the bull-trout—the black-fin and the orange-fin.” 
_ Covcu (“British Fishes,” iv., 1864, page 245) observed, 
“The question at present, therefore, is not whether the young 
of the salmon—and, we may add, of some others of the same 
family—may not remain in fresh water for more than a year, 
during which they may bear on the sides a series of dusky 
marks at this time, denominated Par-bands, but whether there 
be not also a distinct species which bears those marks, and 
which, by something like arrested development, is never 
