RECENT RESEARCH UPON SALMON 227 
“The greatest uncertainty has latterly resolved itself into 
whether the parr was distinct, or a variety or young of the 
common trout §. fario. With the migratory salmon it has 
no connection whatever. . ... I have no hesitation whatever in 
considering the parr not only distinct, but one of the best and 
most constantly marked species we have, and that it ought to 
remain in our systems as the Salmo salmulus of Ray.” 
Of course, all this haziness has been cleared away by the 
labours of pisciculturists ; parr have been reared by the million 
from the ova of salmon, but the curious part of the matter is 
that no doubt seems to have arisen about the identity of parr 
with young salmon until men of science began to mell with 
them. About smolts, at all events, our early legislators spoke 
with no uncertain voice, and although a smolt preserved in 
spirits in a museum may seem a very different fish from a part 
in the next bottle, it is difficult to see how any practical 
fisherman could entertain any doubt that they were the same 
creatures in different stages, seeing that the little fellows may 
be taken any day in April or May in every stage of transition, 
from the spotted and barred river dress to the silvery jacket 
they assume on moving seaward. And so in the thirteenth 
century Alexander III. of Scotland enacted that ‘‘ smolts sould 
not be taken or destroyed be nettes or other ingynes at mylne 
dams fra the middes of Aprill to the nativitie of Saint John 
the Baptist (June 24th),” which covers the whole period when 
smolts can be found in any river. Before becoming smolts, 
i.e., before they assume in April the migratory livery of silver, 
they are spotted parr, and they are all in the sea before 
Midsummer Day. 
No better example could be found of the auxiliary value 
to the scientific student of the mere sportsman, provided he 
has brains as well as eyes in his head, than that afforded by 
William Scrope, the inimitable author of Days and Nights of 
Salmon-Fishing (1838). Many years before Shaw’s experiments 
had proved conclusively that parr were immature salmon, 
