254 BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 
but few of these early fish escape to the spawning-beds. If 
inspectors and water bailiffs are on the alert to insist on the 
statutory minimum of mesh—r3 inch from knot to knot 
when wet—every fish weighing 2 lb. and under ought to get 
through the net ; but it is within my own knowledge that the 
law is pretty commonly evaded in this respect, and a much 
smaller mesh employed. Even where the mesh measures no 
less than 13 inch from knot to knot when dry, it contracts far 
within these limits so soon as it is put in the water. 
As the season advances, salmon-trout continue to run from 
the sea, but show a marked diminution in size, until, at the 
beginning of August, great shoals of small salmon-trout, from 
half a pound to one pound in weight, make their way into the 
rivers and brooks. These are the equivalent in age of the 
grilse of salmon ; that is, they are virgin salmon-trout, leaving 
the sea for the first time, and are known in different localities 
as finnocks, herling, whitling, whiting, etc. Once they get into 
a river with a good leading head of water, salmon-trout run up 
to their appointed ground much quicker than salmon. If the 
river run through a lake, they will tarry awhile therein, 
behaving exactly like their non-migratory kin; but when 
gravid they hasten to the spawning-grounds, deposit their ova, 
and are off again as kelts to the sea at much greater speed than 
salmon, In many rivers they show a peculiar and inveterate 
preference for certain tributaries, and desert the main stream 
for these, in some instances when the favoured affluent joins it 
only a short distance above the tide. 
The local names of the salmon-trout are numerous and 
varied. On the Tees it is known as scurf, or cochivies; in 
Scotland generally as the sea-trout, except on the Berwickshire 
coast, where that name is applied to the bull-trout; in Cumber- 
land as mort; and on the Tweed as whiting, or whitling, though 
that term is generally restricted to this fish in the grilse stage, 
corresponding exactly to the Highland name for it, finnock— 
i.e., fionach, the white fellow. Elsewhere in Scotland these 
