
DR DAVY’S OBSERVATIONS ON THE CHARR. 333 
I have had no opportunity to try the effect of sea or salt water on the impreg- 
nated ova of the salmon. The few experiments I have been able to make on the 
young fish have given results favourable to the above conjecture. I shall briefly 
relate them. 
On the 10th of April, a young fish, about an inch in length, its permanent fins 
fully formed, taken from a small pool in the bed of the Leven (the river that flows 
out of Windermere, and then unusually low) was put into a half-pint of salt 
water, of the specific gravity 10277. It lived about thirty-three minutes. Shortly 
after, a smolt, the instant it was taken was put into the same water ; it was 
about seven inches in length, and its head was not constantly under water. It 
lived about an hour. From comparative experiments with fresh water, I am led 
to infer that in the same limited quantity of river water, it might have lived two 
hours; the limit being probably the exhaustion of the air. When a stronger so- 
lution of salt was used—that in the preceding experiments being nearly the same 
as sea-water—the effects were far more decided. Thus a fish of the same size as 
that first mentioned, put into a saturated solution of common salt, died in two 
minutes; and a parr taken on the 10th of October, measuring about four inches 
in length, put into a solution of common salt of the specific gravity 1047, died in 
a few minutes. 
April 12, 1852. 
VOL. XX. PART III. 4x 
